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Your Tax Money For Madrassas?

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By BUZZ KELLY

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 10, 2008

It's coded "CP0020." It's a measure that will be on the November ballot when you vote for president.

By the time you see it at the voting booth, it will probably be bundled in with other stuff, very innocuous, with a different name - something like "Clear Religious Skies," maybe - and you may not even notice it. But you really need to know about it.

The proposal by the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission changes Florida's state constitution so that your tax dollars can be given to religious-based programs. Any kind of programs. Private schools, church-sponsored drug treatment, TV shows, ad campaigns promoting whatever, etc. Anything.

And that's the problem. Although sponsored by Christian crazies, the plan would turn our constitution into a church-state shambles the extent of which they certainly haven't imagined. Maybe the idea of your tax dollars going to support Christian programs or school vouchers is OK with you, but what if they go to an Islamic madrassas? Or a Hindu school? Or a Buddhist ashram? How about a Shinto shrine? And since Satanism is a religion, is it OK if your tax dollars support that?

The measure makes no distinction between religions, it simply erases the long-enshrined separation between church and state in Florida - the first time any state in America has done so. With a stroke of the pen, it all becomes fair game; any religion can claim levy on your money, and neither you nor the state Supreme Court will be able to stop them because it will be in our Constitution.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in a higher power, that something put the machinery of the universe in motion and desires our betterment. But this scheme, CP0020, is evil.

Buzz Kelly is a Tampa native, former advertising executive and freelance writer.

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