Apparently the president hasn't been out there for some time, or if he has, he hadn't assimilated his experiences. Ask anyone who has ever been in serious trouble in a strange town, on the road, nomadic, down and out, homeless, destitute, or otherwise lost : he will tell you that much, if not most, and in some places, all of the so-called safety nets for desperate people are provided by religious organizations. Among the religious refuges, virtually all of them are run by Christian church groups. There are a few exceptions. For example, the Hari Krishnas customarily provide a free meal.
These refuges may be mainstream, like those set up by the Catholic Church or the Salvation Army. Outside the big cities however, one finds that a great many of the soup kitchens, homeless shelters, missions and so forth, are maintained by small locally based fundamentalist sects blessed with strong evangelical zeal. Although this is not invariably the case, a shower and a sermon are de rigueur before partaking of the Lord's morsel.
One should certainly not mock or disparage the good work of these groups. For a great many people their presence is a matter of life or death. Most of the people who staff them are compassionate to a fault, nor do they impose their views beyond whatever is stipulated in the ground rules.
Looking around our society, one sees that governments, whether federal, state or local, have largely reneged on their responsibility to the most unfortunate members of our society.This is acutely obvious in small, out of the way rural or semi-rural locations. If you happen to find yourself out on the road for a spell, you'd best resign yourself to a large helping of Bible-thumping, Amazing Grace, moments of prayer both silent and noisy, sermons and sermonizing, all combined with half-hearted when not obnoxious attempts at conversion.
The author has discovered this to be the case wherever he has roamed: small towns in Pennsylvania, New York State, California, Canada, Indiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere. He has reason to believe that the situation is the same throughout the US.
This being the case, one might have thought that the 'Compassionate Conservatives', ( an oxymoron on the level of 'People's Republic'), would have advocated that more government money be poured into federal programs that, at least in some places, would give the homeless a chance to avoid being obliged to accept charity from religious groups committed to beliefs they find objectionable, or ones with a conversion agenda they deem unacceptable
Instead, what George the Usurper's administration has done is to propose laws that will forever legitimize the federal government's abdication of its responsibility in the domain of providing support and protection for the homeless, the helpless and the defenseless.
Faith-based soup kitchens and homeless shelters in America are predominantly Christian. In this country at least, one does not find Jewish, Buddhist or Moslem homeless shelters. This tradition is rooted in the Middle Ages. It is recognized the world over that a loaf of bread will do more to make a convert than any number of sermons. The reason that there are no Jewish soup kitchens is because any Jew caught running one in the Middle Ages would have been burned at the stake. He would not even have had to be found guilty of dishing out voluntary or involuntary religious instruction: a loaf of bread, in and of itself, is sufficient enticement to conversion.
As a matter of basic human nature, it is natural for a religion organization to expect that those whom it intends to help will share its ethical norms. For the devoutly religious, an ethical norm and a mythological dogma are not easily separated.
Thus, although most of the staff in a St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen probably don't care if their clients don't believe that the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven in bodily form, there are more than a few rural Baptist congregations who would take a dim view of anyone who knocked at their door and was prepared to dispute the immanence of the Rapture.
It is not only the Christian groups who do this: anyone who avails himself of the 'free food' promised by the Hari Krishnas , learns that he is in for a night of sermons, ecstatic chanting and - yes - earnest person-to-person huckstering of carloads of revealed doctrine.
By pushing an agenda of government funding for faith-based initiatives, George the Usurper is doing two things (1) He is trying to legitimize, by law, a defacto situation in which most of the government's responsibility is already being handled by religious organizations. (2) He is handing over to the most backward, primitive and dogma-ridden sects of Christianity, a huge financial advantage in the universal war for the salvation of lost souls.