The Orlando Sentinel surveyed Florida’s voucher schools and found that nearly 160 of them openly discriminate against LGBT students, families, and staff. Democratic legislators object and have been meeting with the head of the state’s Step Up for Students, which transfers hundreds of millions of dollars (that would otherwise go to the state as taxes ) to voucher schools. Some major corporations have said they would no longer contribute to the program (in lieu of taxes), which undoubtedly encourages Step Up to talk.
Republican legislators indicate that anti-LGBT policies are not a problem for them.
Such bias is certainly not a problem for Betsy DeVos, whose family foundation has supported anti-gay causes for many years.
And it’s probably okay with the Supreme Court, which ruled that discrimination against a gay couple was acceptable if based on a sincere religious conviction. As you will see if you open the story, these evangelical schools sincerely and passionately detest gay people.
Which other groups is it okay to hate while funded by public dollars?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Michelle Rhee spoke in favor of vouchers before she left to be a fertilizer company board member. Wikipedia reports that her daughter attends a Christian school in Tennessee.
Let’s open the Church of Satan and discriminate against all fundamentalist, evangelical Christians.
How about the church of public conscience? The main belief is that public money must go to public entities. Sending public money to private entities offends my religion and steps on my religious liberty.
Church of Public Conscience.
Someone else would start a church called the Church of Trumpelstitskin to counter that one.
From Wikipedia about the school that Wikipedia identifies as the school Michelle Rhee’s daughter attends,
“The purpose of the school is to provide a quality education from a Biblical perspective for children of Christian families, designed to prepare students to influence culture and society for Christ.”
heavy emphasis on the word INFLUENCE: missionary tactics in play
It sounds like taxation without representation. It’s fine for evangelicals to discriminate in the name of religion. Why should everyone be forced to fund schools that discriminate and deal in misinformation and have no say in the matter?
Is it ok if I commit a burglary if the person I rob is sincerely believed to be evil by some member of society? That way I would not have to appear sincere myself, but could depend on the sincerity of someone else. I could just rob them.
The Sumpeme Court has begun to supremely contort itself to try to achieve some version of their own ideal utopia. My dystopia.
Fifth Third Bank said it would stop supporting the program. Then it reversed its decision on Friday. I got a Facebook ad from a Florida school choice advocacy group essentially saying “thank you for advocacy with Fifth Third Bank.”
So, a bunch of customers, including some high deposit ones I might imagine, probably threatened to close their accounts in protest.
Fifth Third is headquartered in Cincinnati which has a large Catholic population. The original announcement was a huge surprise for that reason. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and many of the state Catholic Conferences, Tenn., Indiana, Oklahoma, Calf., Mass., R.I., etc. are self described as strong advocates for school choice. Similar to the Koch’s, it appears the Catholic political machine prefers tax credits. Tax credits defund government. A journalist should look into who is funding the Catholic Action Networks and state conferences.
The state conferences overwhelmingly have male directors. Fully expected.
The ICC gave more bills but I chose these. I have NO idea of how I got on their email list. I decided to learn what they are doing. Pence signed a law when he was governor of Indiana to make aborted fetuses have a burial. It was turned down by a court.
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Indiana Catholic Conference (ICC) is the public policy voice of the Catholic bishops in Indiana regarding state and national matters.
During this short session of the Indiana General Assembly, legislation has reached the crossover period. Bills making its out of their chamber of origin will move to the other side of the chamber. The following bills, which originated in the house will pass over the the senate. Bills originating in the senate, will pass to the house.
Below is the standing or disposition of a few of the 136 bills that were of interest to the Church community:
SB299 Fetal Remains authored by Sen. Brown from Fort Wayne. This bill give structure to the Indiana Department of Health for the dignified cremation or burial of fetal remains.
HB1001 School Accountability authored by Rep. DeVon from Granger. This education bill and many others were tracked by the ICC and the Indiana Nonpublic Education Association (INPEA). This bill would hold a school harmless and not give a performance grade in 2018-1019 lower than the grade earned in 2017-2018.
The following bills were opposed by the ICC because they were in opposition to the Church’s teaching regarding the respect and dignity of life. They died while in the house.
HB1020 End of Life Options, authored by Rep Pierce from Bloomington. This was essentially physician assisted suicide.
HB1141 Birth Control prescriptions, authored by Rep Fleming of Jeffersonville. This would have allowed pharmacists to prescribe and dispense contraceptives.
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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a law this year that mandated funerals for fetuses
Updated Oct 3, 2016,
…But Pence signed one anti-abortion bill in March of this year that was so extreme, even some pro-life Republicans opposed it. And it was eventually blocked from going into effect by a federal judge for violating women’s right to choose.
The law did something truly bizarre. It would have basically forced women to seek funerary services for a fetus — whether she’d had an abortion or a miscarriage, and no matter how far along the pregnancy was.
The law Pence backed would have required all fetal tissue to be cremated or buried, an unprecedented measure in state law. The law also banned abortion if the fetus had a “disability” — which would have denied women the right to end a pregnancy even in case of serious fetal anomalies.
The wording of the burial provision meant that technically, even if a woman had a miscarriage at eight weeks of pregnancy at home, she would have to keep the blood and tissue, take it to a hospital or clinic, and have it buried or cremated by a funeral home. The law would have also dramatically increased the cost of an abortion, since providers would have had to spend time and money on arranging the funerary services.
And since about half of miscarriages happen shortly after a fertilized egg is implanted, and occur at roughly the same time a woman would expect her period, many women could be having a miscarriage and not even know it — and thus, technically be violating the law if they didn’t cremate or bury the resulting tissue…
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12190380/mike-pence-trump-vice-president-abortion-funerals-fetuses
The mandated burial for unborn fetuses was or is still the law in Ohio. It happened to a relative of mine. Not because of an abortion, because of a miscarriage. The grief of the parents was multiplied by having to name the fetus who died in utero, buy a burial plot, conduct a funeral for a five month fetus.
Carol,
Thanks for the post. Citizens seem reluctant to accept the church as it is today preferring to remember the Catholic Church of the 60’s and 70’s when it embraced pluralism, democracy and modernism.
Even Pope Francis is under attack from the social Darwinists currently at the helm in the U.S.
The UCCCB and state Catholic Conferences are highly active in politics and well funded to achieve the denial of rights to women and men, and to thwart the majority rule guaranteed in the Constitution.
Jane Mayer, who exposed the Koch’s in her book, Dark Money, should write about the Dark Agenda of the Catholic Church.
Check out the articles posted at Future Ed, housed at America’s oldest Catholic University, Georgetown University in D.C. One article’s title blatantly criticizes Bernie Sander’s position on education. Check out the bio’s of the organization’s advisory board.
While Georgetown’s school newspaper, The Hoya, reports on the university’s admissions scandal, they should write about Future Ed singling out for criticism, the presidential candidate most aligned with WWJD.