It's a Sin. At another, clients pass by a poster of an addict in a hospital bed, ripping IV tubes out of his arms and throwing his pills in the garbage. An angel hovers nearby, offering her protection from this plague of prescriptions. And at a Christian young adult home in Corpus Christi, police recently took the unusual step of arresting a supervisor after teenagers complained that they were beaten and roped to a bed, all in the name of Christian discipline.
More arrests are anticipated, authorities say.
With his conviction that religious groups can transform lives in ways government can't, Bush sponsored laws in 1997 that allow churches to provide social services their own way, outside the intrusive glare of the state. The new laws exempted faith-based drug treatment programs from all state health and safety regulations followed by their secular counterparts, a list contained in a rule book as thick as a Russian novel that covers every detail from fire detectors to frayed carpets. Counselors in religious treatment programs now may skip the criminal background checks and hundreds of hours of training required of their state-licensed peers. Faith-based groups that provide child care or operate homes for troubled youths can opt out of state inspections and choose to be regulated by a Christian child care agency approved by the state. This would roll us back 60 years, right back to when people thought you were an alcoholic merely because you didn't accept Jesus as your personal savior.