State Department accused of using taxpayer money to promote atheism

House Republican lawmakers on Wednesday accused the State Department of engaging in a “pattern of obfuscation and denial” as it used taxpayer money to promote atheism overseas.

At issue is a $500,000 grant solicited by the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in April of 2021 that was eventually awarded to Humanists International (HI), an organization the promotes humanism – an outlook that holds no belief in god, the supernatural, an afterlife or a higher source of moral values.

The State Department maintained for years that the grant money was being used to support religious freedom programs and to encourage tolerance toward religious minority populations overseas, denying that any efforts were being made to recruit people for the humanist cause.

The government agency did not acknowledge any potential misuse of taxpayer funds until last month, after it sent congressional investigators a PowerPoint slide deck purportedly being used by HI in programming in Nepal that the State Department later admitted “were not the actual slides provided at the trainings.”

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State Department accused of using taxpayer money to promote atheism

Three Republican congressmen argued that the State Department misled Congress as it sought to “expand atheist networks abroad in violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.”

nypost.com

 

[Growing in Grace]

More from the article:
Congressional investigators discovered constitutional violations after they obtained slides used at HI presentations in Nepal that differed from the ones previously provided to Congress by the State Department.

“The contents of the slides provided at the trainings, presently in the Committee’s possession, are damning,” the lawmakers wrote.

“To be sure, despite all of the evasions by the Department, it is now plain that the grant promoted atheism and expanded atheist networks abroad, while neglecting Christian and Muslim minorities who, unlike atheists and humanists, face real persecution in the relevant parts of South Asia.”

“Indeed, the programming was designed to recruit new members of the grantee organization in violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution,” they said.

 

[Tall Timbers]

Our govmint spends so much new debt on other countries... and more often than not seems to get a negative return on it. I don't think we'll ever have a law abiding responsible govmint this side of the Millennium... it's sad.