yes or no: should Ken Ham be given $18 mill tourist tax break for Noah Ark Park?

[boutons_deux]

Radical Ruling: Judge Approves Aid Package For Ky. ‘Ark Park’

Late yesterday afternoon, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that creationist Ken Ham’s controversial “Ark Park” has a legal and cons utional right to receive a package of tax incentives from the state and, thus, the taxpayers.

Ham’s fundamentalist Christian ministry, Answers in Genesis (AiG), promotes creationism and has openly stated that it plans to use the attraction, formally known as Ark Encounter – a theme park built around a large rendition of Noah’s Ark – to evangelize visitors. AiG also plans to restrict hiring to right-wing Christians who are willing to sign its statement of faith.

In light of these religious requirements, Kentucky officials, who were at first enthusiastic about the project because they thought it might bring jobs to economically distressed Grant County, became wary and decided not to grant $18 million in tax incentives to the project. Ham sued, arguing that his project had been the victim of discrimination.
U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that the tax-incentive program is religiously neutral and that Ark Encounter must be permitted to take part.

Van Tatenhove misses the point. The incentive program may be neutral, but the Ark Park is not. Its purpose is to convince people that AiG’s interpretation of the Bible is correct and that they should adopt it.

Americans United has said repeatedly that Ham and AiG have every right to promote their religious views, and that includes the right to buy land and build a copy of what Ham believes is Noah’s Ark. But they must pay for this themselves. Ham and his allies should have no right to compel the taxpayers, even indirectly, to support their evangelistic efforts.

Gregory M. Lipper, AU’s senior litigation counsel, has read and analyzed Van Tatenhove’s opinion. Lipper says the judge’s opinion all but ignores a 2004 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court (Locke v. Davey), which gives states the discretion to exclude religious programs from otherwise neutral funding schemes.

What’s especially troubling about all of this is the larger trend it represents. For more than 200 years, the practice in the United States was for religious groups to pay their own way. Their buildings, programs and evangelistic efforts were underwritten by the men and women sitting in the pews, not the taxpayers at large.

In the 1980s, a flock of right-wing judicial activists on the courts began to erode that principle, a tendency that even infiltrated the U.S. Supreme Court. Later this year, the high court will hear a case from Missouri concerning a church that wants the taxpayers to pay for surfacing of its playground. The court may say this is permissible because a church playground supposedly does not have a religious use.

But every dime a church saves by turning to the government for help to pay for something “secular” is one more dime it can use to evangelize and promote religion. AU’s view on this is clear: Houses of worship should pay forall of their projects, whether it is a new furnace or a vacation Bible camp, with donations given freely and voluntarily; they should never rely on the public purse.


https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-sep...or-ky-ark-park