Taxpayer funds and religious schools

I'm an individualist. As such, I don't like the idea of parents training their children to maintain the same beliefs and opinions as their own. I would prefer that children do not go through religious schools that try to push beliefs. This is also one of the many reasons that I object to our public schooling system.


Before any religious families criticize me for this belief, there are a couple of other things that you should know about me. My individualistic tendencies also mean that I will not demand that everyone must believe the same things that I do. I am also willing to acknowledge that I have no right to keep you from raising your children as you see fit. Even though I don't like it, I won't fight you over the right to send your children to religious schools.

There is a high profile Supreme Court case relating to religious schools. The question being asked is if money donated to scholarship funds that utilize tax credits can be used for tuition at religious schools. This is very different from vouchers, although there are still some indirect tax implications. For the sake of simplicity, I will just write about my views on vouchers.

Can taxpayer funds be used to fund tuition at religious schools? There are some complications to this question. People don't want their money to be used to fund a religion that they don't believe. On the other hand, people don't want to be told that money set aside for their children's educations has to go to an education that they oppose such as our public schools. In a sense, this dispute comes down to when money changes from the taxpayers to the families. To put it another way, not many people want to pay taxes that are immediately funneled to a cause that defies their beliefs, but nobody wants the government to watch over how people spend money saved from tax credits. Where do we draw the line?

When it comes to schooling, we take money from families in the form of taxes. We have no say over this process. Those funds are then funneled to schools minus some bureaucratic expenses. Even the task of distributing money has a cost. To gain the benefits of those taxes, you have to have children, and you have to send them to a government-run school.

In the case of vouchers, families are given a degree of choice. A family can take a decent chunk of these funds to another school. Whether or not these schools can be religious has not been settled.

Imagine for a moment that you want your child to attend a religious school. Imagine that you have a limited budget and can't quite afford the school. You could afford it if the government didn't take money from you to fund schooling. The government gives the money back to you on the condition that you abandon the desire to teach your child about religion. Does the use of taxation to halt religious pursuits qualify as freedom of religion?

We have an opportunity to set a dangerous precedent. We can establish that the government can attack religious freedom simply by attaching taxes. It should be clear to everyone that this was never the intent of the first amendment.

With tax credits, it's even worse. Nobody is being forced to spend their own money on religion. The only people who are paying for religious schools are people who support religious schools. This does create a reduction in tax revenue that the government has to address, but this is clearly not the same as funneling taxpayer funds to religion.

We keep talking about separation of church and state. In many ways, I agree with this view. I don't agree with the interpretation. It's separation of church and state, not the use of state to separate citizens from church.