"Sen. Barack Obama, continuing his outreach to white, swing voters, traveled to conservative eastern Ohio today to propose strengthening the White House program assisting faith-based social service organizations while insisting those groups not discriminate against aid recipients.

Obama's $500-million-a-year Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships would also create 1 million new slots for summer jobs and education programs.

"I'm not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, and I'm not saying that they're somehow better at lifting people up," Obama said after touring the Eastside Community Ministry. "What I'm saying is that we all have to work together -- Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim, believer and non-believer alike -- to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

Religious voters are a wild card this election year, and Obama showed today he wants at least a large slice. George W. Bush dominated the voting block in 2000 and 2004, but presumptive Republican nominee John McCain does not hold similar allegiances and has never made his faith a central part of his political appeal. Evangelical leaders, such as Focus on the Family's James Dobson, have spoken out against both McCain and Obama.

Of the two presumptive nominees, Obama has been the more overtly religious, reaching out to Christian leaders and speaking of his religious beliefs often. But he has had to contend with two conflicting but powerful strikes against him: his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose incendiary sermons called into question Obama's own beliefs for some voters; and the persistent but false rumors that Obama is a Muslim.

In Zanesville, he did not shy away from professing his beliefs.

"I didn't grow up in a particularly religious household," he said. "But my experience in Chicago showed me how faith and values could be an anchor in my life. And in time, I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community, that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work."

Bush first proposed federal assistance to religious organizations during his 2000 presidential campaign and was quickly seconded by then-Vice President Al Gore as both were reaching out to evangelical voters. But Bush's faith-based initiative has been mired in controversy. Its first director, John DiIulio, quit the White House and charged the administration was stocked with "Mayberry Machiavellis" more interested in politics than policy. Another program director, David Kuo, wrote a scathing tell-all book recounting how Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was used to advance Republican political objectives.

Moreover, Obama aides said, the current program simply has not worked. Funding has always been tight, and the program requires faith-based organizations interested in assistance to attend conferences in Washington to learn how to apply, which has reduced participation to a few savvy groups. Instead, Obama would set up "community partners" to "train the trainers" to apply in a more streamlined fashion. He would also establish a new effort to evaluate the effectiveness of federally funded social service efforts.

But Obama aides said an Obama administration would get tougher on groups that discriminate in hiring practices and assistance. The groups would have to abide by federal hiring laws that reject discrimination based on race, sex, and religion. Obama said he supports federal legislation that would extend those protections to homosexuals as well, a flash point with some religious organizations that maintain hiring or assisting gay people would run counter to their beliefs.

Under the Obama proposal, the groups could use federal funds only to assist anyone in need, not anyone from a certain background or religion. Nor could federal funds be used to proselytize or spread religious beliefs.

"This is about providing equal treatment, but not special treatment," an Obama aide said.

DiIulio endorsed Obama's proposal as a "principled, prudent and problem-solving vision" for the future of faith-based social service.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State pronounced himself "disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration."

"The president's faith-based initiative has undermined civil rights and civil liberties and become deeply mired in partisan politics," Lynn said. "It ought to be shut down."

The breakdown between a former Bush White House official and a liberal standard bearer such as Lynn will likely suit Obama fine. Beyond policy, the initiative is more evidence that Obama is stepping up efforts to reach evangelical and other religious voters. Zanesville is the heart of a House district long held by Republican Bob Ney, but taken by Democrat Zack Space in 2006 after Ney was sent to prison on corruption charges. Space was late to endorse Obama, and yesterday was in South Carolina visiting his mother, an aide to the congressman said.
Republicans did not try to deride Obama's proposal, but they did question his appeal to religious voters. They pointed to a recent letter Obama wrote to a gay rights organization in San Francisco, saying he supports repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines a marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and will "oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" to ban gay marriage.

Obama said yesterday he still is not in favor of gay marriage, but he said the Defense of Marriage Act "was an unnecessary imposition on the traditional rules of marriage" governed by the states.

"That is not a new position," he said." (Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post, July 1, 2008)