The national section of today's New York Times carries an article under the headline "Lieberman Seeks Greater Role for Religion in Public Life." The article contains the following sentence: "Unlike many conservative Christian politicians, Mr. Lieberman has not taken positions like advocating prayer in schools or saying that religious groups should take over much of the burden of social services now shouldered by the government -- a position taken by Mr. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee."
This is just outright false. The Times claims that Mr. Lieberman "has not taken positions like advocating prayer in schools." Yet Mr. Lieberman is on record in a brief before the United States Supreme Court as having advocated exactly that. The case was Wallace v. Jaffree, in which students challenged the constitutionality of an Alabama law permitting teachers to lead their classes in a prayer that said, "Almighty God, You alone are our God. We acknowledge You as the Creator and Supreme Judge of the world. May Your Justice, Your Truth, and Your Peace abound this day in the hearts of our countrymen, in the counsels of our government, in the sanctity of our homes and in the classrooms of our schools in the name of our Lord, Amen." Mr. Lieberman, who was then serving as attorney general of Connecticut, sided with the Reagan administration's Justice Department, the Moral Majority, the Christian Legal Society and Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama in defending the statute. Opposing the Alabama school prayer statute were the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Jewish Congress. Mr. Lieberman even made a campaign issue of the matter in his successful run for the U.S. Senate against Lowell Weicker, criticizing Mr. Weicker for opposing school prayer.
As for the matter of the involvement of religious groups in providing social services, it is not only Senator Lieberman but Vice President Gore himself who have basically agreed with what the Times characterizes only as George W. Bush's position on that topic. In a May 24, 1999 speech in Atlanta on "The Role of Faith-Based Organizations," Mr. Gore spoke of "A church's soup kitchen. A synagogue's program to help battered women. A mosque's after-school computer center that keeps teenagers away from gangs and drugs," and he said, "People are engaged in the deeply American act of not waiting for government to deal with the problems on their own doorsteps. Instead, they are casting a vote for their own wise hearts and strong hands to take care of their own."