More on Non-Profits (Especially Religious Ones) Providing Civic Services

Thanks, Marc, for the interesting post. I too see a difference in trends between (1) excluding religious or private groups altogether from state-promoted social efforts and (2) subjecting them unyieldingly to conditions (e.g., nondiscrimination conditions) that may effectively exclude them. I think the former impulse--to exclude religious (or more generally private) groups as such has weakened over the last 30 years, with no reversal of that recently. Obama has mostly continued the Bush administration's effort to enlist faith-based groups in social services (and channeled additional funds to FBOs in the 2009-10 stimulus package); the contribution of those groups has been commended in the 2012 Democratic platform (see p. 15) and in speeches by both Barack and Michelle Obama.

But the second impulse above, to subject groups rigidly to accompanying conditions,  has significantly strengthened  in recent years. I think it's an open question how much of this is attributable to the gay-rights revolution, and how much to the broader establishmentarian idea that the state can and should make use of religions that are willing to conform fully to the state's norms. (As Marc suggests, the latter approach is one that separationists have warned against for a long time.)