Faith-based initiative != discriminatory hiring

About those hotly debated hiring questions over the revamped White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Mark Silk writes:

If, in the usual democratic way, the federal government decides to fund certain programs for the general welfare; and if, because they share a commitment to those programs, certain religious institutions choose to act as secular agencies in carrying them out; then fine. But if they can foster their own purely religious goals via discriminatory hiring, then not so fine. Not only because the rest of us end up paying to support those goals. But also because our tax dollars will be out there tempting other religious institutions to change what they are.

Sounds right to us.