Bob "Wonders"

Anyone who listens to Bob on a regular basis soon figures out that he gets his "news" from various right-wing sources on the Internet. One of his favorite sources is World Net Daily (WND). To say this website is "conservative" fails to understand the word.

On Tuesday, WND ran a story about Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) filing a lawsuit against the U.S. government et al. for giving taxpayer money to the Northwest Marriage Institute for bible-based marriage counseling. (Interestingly, the lawsuit was filed last September, but WND was just getting around to "reporting" on it this week.) If you take a close look at the article, WND makes this suit seem like something it isn't. First, the headline reads "'Bible-based' marriage counseling under fire". Well, that's not true, nobody is trying to prohibit anyone from stop bible-based marriage counseling. The suit only seeks to stop taxpayer dollars from funding bible-based marriage counseling. The sub-headline states, "Group lead by Muslim sues federal agency..." This also is not true. AU is led by the Barry Linn, who is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Therefore, the leader of AU is a Christian, not a Muslim. The first line of the article begins, "[t]he lawsuit was filed by a Muslim activist..." It's important to note the lawsuit was filed by Aisha Khan, legal director of AU, on behalf of numerous plaintifs, including a Unitarian-Universalist minister, a Presbyterian, a Buddhist, and a Baptist. But the article is written to give you the impression that radical Muslims are filing lawsuits to prevent bible-based marriage counseling which, of course, is not true.

Bob "picked up" on this story on Wednesday, and "wondered" if Aisha Khan thinks that marriage counseling should be taught from the Koran, which, according to Bob, teaches violence against your wife. But of course, Bob is once again missing the point. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Aisha Khan, and AU, would also oppose the use of taxpayer dollars to teach Koran-based marriage counseling. If Bob can cite an example where taxpayer dollars are funneled to to Muslims or Islamic organizations for the purpose of advancing that faith, then I'm sure that AU would promptly file a lawsuit against the government to end that illegal distribution of taxpayer dollars.

Here's what I wonder: Why does Bob apparently dislike the separation between religion and government? How is this separation a threat to his beliefs?