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Religion & Morality
- School Prayer: Current law is that schools allow religious groups to organize on school grounds as if they are any club. Schools are not allowed to conduct prayers at the beginning of school, but neither are they allowed to stop a student from praying.
- Gay Marriages: Same Sex Marriages may be officiated by church officials, or anyone else, but ceremonial marriages in and of themselves involve no civil laws and carry no legal benefits or responsibilities.
Faith-Based Organizations
- As welfare decreases, churches and other faith-based organizations (FBOs) pick up the slack.
- Churches are tax-exempt, and donations to churches and other charities are tax-deductible,
so federal activity focuses on tax reform to encourage donations, by increasing deductibility on federal and state income taxes.
- Other recent Congressional bills focus on removing restrictions on religious organizations' activities,
so that churches can bid on government block grants for performing welfare services.
- The lessening of restrictions on separation of church and state for this purpose is known as Charitable Choice.
- Opponents of church-provided welfare often cite the separation of church and state as a Constitutional issue. In fact, the phrase does not occur in the Constitution, but was popularized by Thomas Jefferson well after the Constitution was signed. The relevant line int he Constitution is the Establishment Clause, which prohibits establishing a state religion (i.e., an officially-recognized religion).
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Amendment I to the US Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. (1787)
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