Federally funded private school voucher and tax credit programs are more numerous than ever. In its School Choice Yearbook 2012-2013, the Alliance for School Choice reported that $553 million of taxpayer dollars are funding 245,854 K-12 vouchers, an average of $5,686 per student. Currently, nine states along with the District of Columbia participate in voucher programs. Along with the voucher programs, eleven states are enrolled in scholarship tax credit programs, which amount to $405 million a year. These are funds that could otherwise be used to support the education of students in these states’ public schools.

Moreover, studies show that the curricula in many of these publicly funded programs have included the teaching of creationism, including that of Rice University student Zack Kopplin, who advocates against the use of public funds to support schools that use such curricula. In a nation that values the separation of church and state, public funds should not be used to fund the teaching of religious doctrine.

The state of Florida receives the largest proportion of voucher funding, $157,602,339 serving 25,366 students. 164 of the private schools that are eligible for voucher programs included the teaching of creationism in their science curriculum. For example, one of Florida’s approved institutions, The Beverly Institute in Jacksonville, teaches curricula using materials such as, “Evidence of a flood,” “Evidence against Evolution,” and “The Evolution of Man: A Mistaken Belief.” By contrast, in 2008, Florida’s Board of Education affirmatively voted to include the teaching of evolution in public schools. They recognized that, “the scientific theory of evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology.”

People For the American Way Foundation’s Twelve Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics is grounded in our commitment to religious liberty and church-state separation, and in the recognition that fundamental constitutional values sometimes come into creative tension.  Where to draw the lines in any particular situation can be a challenge, and even people who generally agree on constitutional principles may disagree about how they should apply on a given policy question. Nothing demonstrates this complexity more than the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure that American women have access to contraception and reproductive health services while addressing objections that such requirements would violate the conscience of some religious employers.

Religious Right groups and their allies at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have for months been portraying the Obama administration’s proposed rules requiring insurance coverage of contraception as totalitarian threats to religious liberty, even after the administration adjusted its initial proposal to address those concerns.  Some Religious Right leaders are sticking with their ludicrous “tyranny” message even after the Obama administration today released a further revision that broadens the number of religious groups that will be exempt from new requirements while still guaranteeing women access to contraception.

In describing the policy proposal, HHS Deputy Director of Policy and Regulation Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told reporters, “No nonprofit religious institution will be forced to pay for or provide contraceptive coverage, and churches and houses of worship are specifically exempt.” Under the plan, women who work for such organizations would have access to no-cost contraception coverage through other channels.

Here’s where it gets interesting: The new proposal won praise both from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America – and from right-wing ideologue Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who called it “a sign of goodwill by the Obama administration toward the Catholic community.”

In contrast, the proposal was slammed by the far-right Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America – and by Catholics for Choice, which said, “While protecting contraceptive access under the ACA is a win for women, the administration’s caving in to lobbying from conservative religious pressure groups is a loss for everyone.” Catholics for Choice warned that a broadened exemption for religious groups “gives religious extremists carte blanche to trump the rights of others” and that women working at Catholic organizations “are wondering whether they’ll be able to get the same coverage as millions of other women, or if their healthcare just isn’t as important to the president as their bosses’ beliefs about sex and reproduction.”

James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, portrayed the approach as a win-win. “As Catholics United said from the very beginning, reasonable people knew it was right to be patient and hopeful that all sides could come together to solve this complex issue. The White House deserves praise in alleviating the Church’s concerns.”

Leading advocates for women’s heath praised the new approach.  Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood said the group would be taking a look at the details, but said “This policy makes it clear that your boss does not get to decide whether you can have birth control.” A statement from NARAL Pro-Choice America said the group“is optimistic that these new draft regulations will make near-universal contraceptive coverage a reality.”

Meanwhile, anti-choice advocates that have been pushing for rules that would exempt even individual business owners who have objections to providing contraceptive coverage for their employees complained that the new exemption would not extend to private businesses.

Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance said the new rules show Obama’s “intent to trample the religious liberties of Americans” and said, “When religious groups and individual Americans are forced to deny their deeply held religious convictions, it is not called “balance,” it’s called “tyranny.” The Family Research Council repeated Religious Right characterizations of the previous accommodation as an “accounting gimmick.”

People For the American Way believes that the government has a compelling interest in ensuring that women have access to family planning services. Indeed, Dr. Linda Rosentock, dean of the UCLA's school of public health and a member of the Institute of Medicine committee that was part of the review process on the HHS regulations, testified last year that the Centers for Disease Control has ranked family planning as one of the major public health achievements of the 20th Century.

People For the American Way is also deeply concerned about the efforts by  Religious Right groups and its conservative Catholic allies to re-define “religious liberty” in unprecedented ways that would allow groups to take taxpayer dollars without abiding by reasonable regulations such as anti-discrimination requirements – and to allow private employers and others to claim exemption from all kinds of laws based on “religious” or “moral grounds.”

In this case, we believe the Obama administration has acted in good faith to promote the nation’s public health interests while addressing concerns that those policies might burden religious liberty.  Our courts have long recognized that religious liberty, like the freedom of speech, is not absolute, and that policymakers must often balance competing interests. That is what the administration has done.

Richard Mourdock's statement yesterday about rape and God's will, like so many other election issues, implicates the Supreme Court.

Mourdock and his allies are strongly anti-choice. The far right has been committed for a generation to populating our nation's courts with ideologues who will empower them to use government to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. Most prominently, rather than letting a woman decide for herself whether to terminate a pregnancy consistent with her constitutional right to privacy, they have pushed for judges who will water down and ultimately reverse Roe v .Wade.

So while a strong majority of the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to choose an abortion in 1973, today's Court is hostile to reproductive freedom. Abortion rights have already been significantly circumscribed, and Mitt Romney has promised that if he is elected, he will nominate Justices like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts. A change in just one Justice will consign the constitutional right to abortion to history.

Similarly, despite the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, the religious right demands the right to codify their hostility to gays and lesbians into law. The Supreme Court will almost certainly decide this term whether the federal government can refuse to recognize state-recognized marriages of lesbian and gay couples. But they may punt the larger issue of whether states that continue to restrict marriage to heterosexuals are acting consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. How the Court decides will likely be determined by whether it is Barack Obama or Mitt Romney who nominates the next two or three Justices.

There's a reason that the far right is willing to let Mitt Romney pretend to be a moderate as the campaign heads toward Election Day. They know that if he becomes president – and especially if he is backed with a Republican-controlled Senate – the Supreme Court will be in their hands for a generation.

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, PFAW founder Norman Lear describes the values that have guided his activism for the past 30 years: a belief that the right to individual liberty is not dependent on one’s religious beliefs and that the opportunity to pursue a decent life should be available to all. Now, argues Lear, those ideals are being held hostage by demagogues of many forms, and it is up to the American people to fight back.

The religious right leaders who got me engaged in politics often portray such things as free expression and equal protection for all Americans no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation as anti-Christian and un-American, as symptoms of cultural decline. I couldn't disagree more. What strikes me as un-American are the greed, deception and systematic corruption that have infected politics, business and so much of our culture in recent years. Some of those with power and privilege have worked to create a system that continually reinforces that privilege and power, leaving ever-increasing numbers of Americans without reasonable hope for the kind of life their parents worked to give them….

Call it the American dream, the American promise or the American way. Whatever term you use, it is imperiled, and worth fighting for. It is that basic, deeply patriotic emotion that I believe is finding expression — bottom-up, small-d democratic expression — in the Occupy movement. We can, and I would say must, fully embrace both love of country and outrage at attempts to despoil it. What better cause? What better time?

You can read the full op-ed here.