Sheila Kennedy has a post entitled “Pence, Pre-school, and the Right Wing Base”. The back story is that Indiana had the inside track to get $80,000,000 in federal grant money to fund pre-kindergarten education for Hoosier children. In a surprise move, Gov. Pence decided that Indiana would drop out of the race. He cited vague concerns about entanglement with the federal government. I speculated that Gov. Pence’s presidential ambitions were the explanation.
Sheila suggests a related but more local and specific rationale: opposition by the likes of the Indiana Family Association because it would fund competition to church day cares:
We’ve seen this movie before. Every time the state legislature tries to pass minimum health and safety standards for daycare and preschools–usually, after a tragic accident at some unregulated, unsafe facility– conservative churches mount a hysterical assault on “big government,” and claim a religious right to be free of pesky (too-expensive) rules about nutrition, fire safety, minimum ratio of caregivers to infants and the like.
Churches operating daycare and preschool operations that don’t want to comply with health and safety standards are a big part of Governor Pence’s base. Those churches clearly didn’t want federal money funding safer competitors, and the Governor just as clearly got the message.
I also seem to recall that the state rep who last led this effort got bounced in her primary because she wasn’t conservative enough… apparently, making sure that churches get preferential treatment when competing with private enterprise is a conservative value.
Next, all those church coffee shops should be exempted from the rules that Starbucks has to follow.
All businesses are created equal, some are just more equal than others.
Wouldn’t that be some sort of violation of the Establishment clause–letting churches get by with basic health regulations that everyone else has to follow or be shut down? I mean, there is no religious reason for a church not to follow health rules if they are feeding members of the public who happen to visit them, right?
To me, a church that offers day care should follow the same rules as every other day care when it comes to parent/teacher ratios and safety measures.
The “religious liberty” argument is so much crap, and it’s insulting because it doesn’t apply.
I mean, it’s not a restriction of religious liberty …. if the fire marshal shuts down a church because it’s unsafe or doesn’t meet code.
Yet, the logical end of the argument that Miller and Clark and the rest of the Pharisees make is that pretty much a church should do what it wants with no government “intrusion”. Let there be exposed wires, because that’s God’s Will.
If I wanted to argue that perhaps then it’s God’s Will that the First Church of Firetrap burn to the ground with no interference from the local fire department, I doubt they’d agree.
Except, of course, marriage. The government should intrude in THAT. The sacred institution that can be performed by a minister, a judge, a guy in a Fat Elvis suit, or anyone who takes a class online.
I guess the state likes to pick its battles, and chooses the moralistic route as smoothest road, but exposed wires are a moral problem too. As far as I’m concerned, if a kid dies in a fire because the church didn’t have an Exit, while nobody dies in a non-church facility, that’s not in the interests of the common good, nor (in the long run) the interests of the church that decides to take care of kids in a firetrap. I think that churches should set the standard, not fight it. The slogan,”We trust in Jesus, so we put everyone at risk” just isn’t very convincing. I think that’s called “testing God”. Not good.
The religious right is very concerned about the health and safety of the fetus – of children, not so much.
Just out of curiosity, what programs would you slash once the Grant runs out? $80,000,000 may seem small, but once it is spent and people hired, are you going to be the one who says sorry no more grant go away now.
None, the head start my kid went to in the late 80’s is still open. It is a church based head start and they had no problem meeting fed regulations. The care and education was not free for all the children. As both my husband and I worked, we paid full price. Others paid 1/2 and others paid nothing. Currently, they turn away kids because of a long waiting list…due to a lack of funding.