Anti-Christian Organization Funding Suit Dismissed

Today I discovered that a Federal Court actually dismissed a suit to stop taxpayer funding of Northwest Marriage Institute.

What is most amazing is that this decision came out of the Western District of Washington.

Since the Northwest Marriage Institute promotes and provides "Bible-based pre-marital and marriage counseling" to all people who wish the services, this necessarily involved essentially religious work. Therefore, in order to gain taxpayer funding, the Institute changed its workshops in April 2006 from "Bible-based to secular psychological and sociological principles."

The institute received its first federal funding in June 2005 [is there a typo in the opinion?]. Those funds went toward the traditional educational hardware often provided to private religious schools: computer software and to salaries (not usually provided to private religious schools).

Anyway, this opinion is well worth reading. Judge Franklin D. Burgess has a nice writing style, and one or two of his analogies were quite refreshing to read.