About two weeks ago, US District Court Judge, Solomon Oliver, Jr., a Clinton appointee, ruled that the Cleveland, Ohio school voucher program was unconstitutional and violated the first amendment establishment of religion clause. In doing so, he disrupted the lives of 3,800 school children and their families. Although he has backed off somewhat from his order, this landmark voucher program has been thrown into disarray. He wrote, "The Cleveland program does not make aid available without regard to the nature of the schools to be benefitted. The participating schools are overwhelmingly sectarian. This means that parents cannot make an educational choice without regard to whether the school is parochial or not. Therefore the Cleveland program has the primary effect of advancing religion." How should we think about this?

• Since 1995, the Ohio lawmakers began experimenting with scholarship money for poor families to receive $2,250 each toward tuition at a private school of their choice. Most parents used their voucher money at parochial schools to escape the city's inadequate public school system.
  
  
• It is really inaccurate to claim that church and state must be entirely separate or that vouchers violate the Constitution. In an uninterrupted line of five Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 1980s, public aid to religious schools is permissible as long as it flows through parents and vouchers. Furthermore, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled this spring that the Cleveland voucher program did not violate the Constitution and even benefitted Cleveland.
  
  
• This decision reflects the growing judicial hostility to religion that has grown since the 1960s. This has gradually resulted in the elimination of virtually all religious elements from public education. The precedent for support of vouchers is clear. Judge Oliver is simply wrong. One hopes that the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit will resoundingly overturn Oliver's decision. That is what it deserves.
  

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TRUST IN GOVERNMENT

Several recent developments in government have not fostered trust in government at the national level. Allow me to elaborate:

• Reports have now been corroborated that Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, has been involved in an adulterous relationship for at least three years with a 33 year old congressional staffer. In August, Gingrich field for divorce from his wife of 18 years. This is hypocrisy at its worst. Gingrich stood for family and moral principles while he was Speaker. Yet, he was living a life that violated all of these principles. Adultery is not a family value and to say one thing and do another is to violate one of God's standards for leadership above reproach. It is a monstrous tragedy that Gingrich has lived this way. It is also apparently one of the reasons that several members of Congress were inexplicably timid when President Clinton's affair was made public and spilled over into obstruction of justice and perjury.
  
  
• The recent revelations that the FBI's handling of the Waco stand-off with David Koresh and his followers are further evidence that a decline in public trust of government and all of its facets is real. The substance of the problem was that the FBI used incendiary gas canisters at Waco and has a video in its possession depicting the discussion among two special agents concerning the canisters. This occurred in the Clinton justice department and further undermines the credibility of the one of the most trustworthy of government institutions, the FBI. This epitomizes the lack of truthfulness at the highest levels and the lack of accountability of those involved. This is a major issue of credibility and it is serious in a democracy. If the public cannot trust its government the foundation of democracy is destroyed. It is a sad day for democratic government in America.
  

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SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH WITHOUT A TRUTH COMMITMENT

Two recent research projects demonstrate the bankruptcy of approaching one's discipline without any anchor in absolute truth. Consider the following two examples:

A recently published article in the New Yorker, entitled "The Dangerous Philosopher," focuses on peter Singer, Princeton University's professor of bioethics. In the article, Singer is quoted as arguing, "When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him."

Conclusions:

1. This view omits any reference to the invaluable and infinite value of all life to God. Each human life bears God's image and that defines value and worth, not Peter Singer's conclusions.
   
   
2. He is advocating a form of utilitarianism, that justifies the greater happiness for the greatest number as the rule governing ethical decision-making. The Bible would reject such a view and certainly rejects Singer's view.
   
   
3. Singer is really advocating society making the decision on who would be happier and then who should die to insure greater happiness. I would be curious to hear how Singer defines "happy." God defines each life as valuable including the hemophiliac! Singer's society would be a society where humans, who have great difficulty defining happiness, deciding who lives and who dies.

In the June 1999 issue of the American Psychologist an article entitled, "Deconstructing the Essential Father" (by Louise Silverstein and Carl Auerbach), argues that "We do not believe that the data support the conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being and that heterosexual marriage is the social context in which responsible fathering is most likely to occur." This is a postmodern argument there are no truths, only social constructs. The family is one of those social constructs. Fathers are nothing more than social constructs that need to be deconstructed. This social construct is about power and needs to be deconstructed as well. What God calls absolutely essential for the family and for civil order and civilization, the social science deconstructionists call insignificant and not needed. It is a sad state of affairs when in the name of social science, American civilization is self-destructing before our very eyes!!!

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