It’s not like we need another reason to reject Alberto Gonzales’ nomination to be attorney general. There’s the torture policies he approves of, his evasiveness in response to legitimate and straightforward Senate questions, his dismissal of the Geneva Conventions, his questionable conduct in dealing with the president’s criminal record, the list goes on.
But if you’re looking for another reason Gonzales’ nomination should give the Senate pause, consider the would-be attorney general’s position on federally-funded employment discrimination.
The White House faith-based initiative stalled in Congress during Bush’s first term for one simple reason: proponents couldn’t get around the discrimination angle. Right now, charities, religious and secular alike, can apply for federal contacts to perform social services. But there’s a catch — if you accept public money to perform a secular service, you can’t discriminate in hiring. If you’re a privately-funded ministry, you can discriminate against applicants based on religion, sexual orientation, marital status, etc., but if you’re taking public funds, you can’t.
That is, until Bush’s faith-based initiative, which sought to comibine the worst of two worlds: give ministries money and let them discriminate as much as they want.
What does this mean in the real world? It means you could apply for a job that is paid for with tax dollars but face discrimination — legally-permissible discrimination — for being the “wrong” religion, or for being a woman, or for being gay, or for being a single mother. It means a church could post a sign in its window that says “No Jews or Catholics Need Apply,” and even if that job was financed by the government, such a policy would be legal.
Who came up with the legal reasoning to bolster this approach? Who else? Alberto Gonzales.
As my friend Sam Felder explained yesterday, it was Gonzales’, ahem, tortured reasoning that justified the White House’s pro-discrimination policy.
As attorney general, Gonzales would be charged with protecting the civil rights of all Americans. Yet his written replies to senators’ inquiries reflect lock-step support of the controversial White House line on government funding for religious organizations. He fully supports President Bush’s executive order exempting government-subsidized religious groups from some federal anti-discrimination rules.
Using tortured reasoning, Gonzales tried to make publicly subsidized job bias sound like a good thing. He concedes that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination in hiring on the basis of religion. But he notes that Title VII makes an exception for religious organizations, allowing them to use religious criteria in hiring staff. (Nobody thinks federal law should require Methodist churches to hire Zoroastrians as pastors.)
But Gonzales, in keeping with the Bush viewpoint, claims that religious groups retain this special hiring privilege even when they are running programs fully paid for by the taxpayer.
Prior to 2002, he said, Executive Order 11246 “prohibited absolutely the consideration of religion in employment by Federal contractors.” This, Gonzales said, failed “to make accommodation” for religious groups. In 2002, the nominee continued, Bush issued Executive Order 13279 extending the special hiring privilege to religious groups that get government grants or contracts.
Said Gonzales, “I agree with the president that the federal government should not discriminate against faith-based organizations or religiously motivated individuals in federal funding and programs, including government contractors. Such groups and persons should be allowed access to federal programs, including federal contracts, on the same basis as all other groups, rather than being singled out due to their religious nature.”
But, as defenses go, this doesn’t make any sense and Gonzales surely knows it. Religious groups aren’t facing discrimination at all. Catholic Charities, for example, has received millions of dollars in public grants over the years for social service programs, as has Lutheran Social Services. The groups have accepted grants while agreeing to certain safeguards that protect religious liberty and the interests of taxpayers — including the no-discrimination provision.
As it turns out, Gonzales didn’t want religious ministries treated like “all other groups”; he wanted to give them special rights.
Under the president’s rules, all government contractors, except religious groups, are now forbidden to discriminate in hiring on religious grounds. Thus religious groups are not being treated “like all other groups.” Rather, they are being given a special right to engage in religious bigotry in employment in taxpayer-funded programs. Nobody was trying to “discriminate against faith-based organizations” before 2002, as Gonzales suggests. Religious groups were just asked to play by the same rules as everyone else. Gonzales’ take on all this is Orwellian.
Indeed. Gonzales made it clear that his commitment to civil rights through anti-discrimination policies is about as strong as his commitment to laws prohibiting torture.