The United Methodist Children’s Home (UMCH) in Georgia learned an important lesson the hard way; you never can tell when government money will come back to haunt you, in the most unexpected and debilitating ways. UMCH, an admittedly church-related agency, accepts children referred to their care from the State of Georgia’s Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) or the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). For each child UMCH receives a per diem that provides about 50 percent of the cost of supporting the state child on campus. The North Georgia United Methodist Conference estimates that the total state payments for the children amount to about 57 percent of their total operating expense. The result of this arrangement between the State of Georgia and UMCH is that the children have a safe, if religious, environment in which to live. The state has a place to safely house children who would otherwise be forced to remain in dangerous or damaging environments or end up on the streets. Everyone is happy.
Everyone except Aimee Bellmore and Alan Yorker. Bellmore was employed by UMCH as a counselor. In July 2001 she was notified that she would soon be promoted to the position of family therapist. Instead of the expected promotion, however, Bellmore was terminated in November 2001 because UMCH discovered she was a lesbian. “She was informed that to promote its religious beliefs, the Home would employ only Christian heterosexuals who are married or celibate.”1
Alan Yorker didn’t make it as far as Bellmore did in his search for employment at UMCH. A psychotherapist in adolescent and family therapy for more than 20 years, with more than a decade’s experience teaching in Emory University professional schools and a number of appointments to state professional committees, his résumé sparked interest at UMCH. In October 2001 he was called to come interview for a vacant position. Yorker’s interview was terminated abruptly as soon as the interviewer realized Yorker was Jewish, a fact he was required to disclose on the application form he filled out just prior to the interview. Bellmore later revealed that a supervisor told her UMCH’s practice was to throw away all résumés from candidates whose last names sounded Jewish. Ironically, the fact that Yorker made it as far as he did in the interview process at UMCH was because of discrimination his grandfather had faced. In order to prevent similar discrimination from subsequently affecting him or his family, Yorker’s father changed the family’s surname from the decidedly Jewish “Monjesky” to the not particularly ethnic “Yorker.”
As a privately funded entity UMCH would be entirely within its rights to hire and fire whomever it chose under the religious exemption to Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act. Being forced to do otherwise would undermine the mission of UMCH as a religious institution. However, UMCH is not privately funded. The per diem they receive from the State of Georgia gives the state and its taxpayers a say in how UMCH, or any other agency receiving its funds, is run.
In the nineteenth century James G. Blaine proposed an amendment to the Constitution that was never enacted, but various versions of it were adopted by Georgia and 36 other states. These co-called Blaine amendments originally functioned as essentially anti-Catholic laws designed to prevent state funds from funding Catholic parochial schools. Applied more broadly, the amendments also apply to any church-related agency or program. For many years, while Georgia applied the amendment narrowly to Catholic institutions or services, it continued to contract with faith-based organizations such as UMCH. The lawsuit brought by Bellmore and Yorker against the State of Georgia and UMCH brought the issue into the spotlight and forced the State of Georgia to revise its contracts with faith-based service providers.
Like many other religious institutions UMCH relied on government money to support its programs, causing a dependence that Marc Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, is afraid religious institutions will not be able to overcome. “There’s no guarantee at all that this sort of attitude won’t become prevalent and having taken the money—become addicted to the money—it’s not clear that religious institutions are going to be able to walk away.”2
What is clear is that UMCH has a deep concern for Georgia’s at-risk children who, without its help, may have to remain in dangerous home situations or end up on the streets. What is not clear is what, exactly, will change in the future. A position statement on the North Georgia United Methodist Conference’s Web site discusses the church’s take on the settlement between UMCH and the plaintiffs, claiming, “In relation to staff and volunteers, the agreement reaffirms our policies of non-discrimination and our commitment to training our staff using professional standards and practices relating to all children.”3 As UMCH “reaffirms” its “non-discrimination” policies, it is implied that they are the same nondiscrimination policies that cost Aimee Bellmore her job and Alan Yorker his shot at one. According to the North Georgia United Methodist Conference, nothing much seems to have changed.
Reporting outside of the church gives a different picture. “This settlement is a significant breakthrough in the national debate over whether more taxpayer money should be given to religious organizations,” said Susan Sommer, supervising attorney for Lambda Legal, and the lead attorney on this case. “Under the agreement, the State of Georgia will not fund religious groups that use public money to discriminate, and the United Methodist Children’s Home will follow policies prohibiting discrimination in hiring and services.”4
National Public Radio’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty, reporting for Morning Edition, added further, “The Methodist children’s home agreed that it would not discriminate against gay job applicants and that it would not discourage homosexuality or even teach the children its views on the issue.”5
This case, while legally settled and morally unsettling, generates deep concerns about government money and religiously run social services, which, up to this point, have generally been mutually indulgent. As UMCH’s experience clearly demonstrates, it is not always possible for a religious institution to accept government funds and maintain their religious integrity. Not only has UMCH been forced to hire people who do not represent its religious values, but it is prevented from sharing the very values that it represents with the people it set out to help. Government money, in this case, has effectively tied UMCH’s hands behind its back.
While the case against UMCH might well have set a benchmark that will be used in other such cases, its roots are entwined in President Bush’s faith-based initiatives, which many civil rights, religious, social service, and labor communities oppose on the grounds that funding religious institutions violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The outcome of the lawsuit with UMCH clearly validates their concerns.
“If we choose to be in ministry to state children we cannot require the children to go to church or participate in religious activities as a condition of residing in the Home,” reads the statement regarding the lawsuit on the church Web site. “While we will be permitted to take children to church if they want to go, we cannot require it and will be obligated to offer a non-religious alternative to worship.”6 Which proves that when government money comes back to haunt you, all that’s left are secular services masquerading as sanitized religion.
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Claire Frazier is a freelance journalist and book author from Freeport, Maine.
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1 “New Lawsuit Charges Methodist Children’s Home Uses Tax Dollars to Discriminate in Employment and to Indoctrinate Foster Youth in Religion,” Lambda Legal News Release, Aug. 1, 2002.
2 Barbara Bradley Hagerty, “Faith-based Lawsuit Settled,” National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Nov. 6, 2003.
3 www.ngumc.org/adobe/umchletter.pdf.
4 “In a First-of-Its-Kind Example, Lambda Legal Announces Settlement Agreement that Lays Groundwork for Civil Rights Safeguards in Public Funding of Faith Based Organizations,” Lambda Legal News Release, Nov. 5, 2003.
5 Hagerty.
6 www.ngumc.org/adobe/umchletter.pdf.
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