Focus on the Family senior vice president Tom Minnery said Friday the conservative Christian advocacy group soon will withdraw its ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment prohibiting state interference with the religious freedom of a person or organization.
The draft language of the ballot measure said government may not directly or indirectly burden a person or organization by withholding benefits, assessing penalties or excluding a person or group from government programs or facilities.
“There’s a tangled thicket of regulations that make it difficult to negotiate our way through the process,” Minnery said. “When you think of a genuine grassroots effort by volunteers, (some rules) are a wet blanket in that process.”
Minnery said there is pending federal litigation — the Independence Institute, Jon Caldara et al. vs. Bernie Buescher — challenging many aspects of state rules governing the initiative process. It could result in removing some of the worst thorns, Minnery said.
Minnery said one drawback in the process as it now stands is that anyone can file a civil lawsuit alleging fraud against ballot-petition circulators if any petition signers falsify information.
Colorado Springs-based Focus would consider another attempt at a ballot measure in the 2014 election cycle or look at a legislative push next year, Minnery said.
Focus also withdrew a similar measure in 2010.
Minnery said many of the church and religious organizations that would back a religious-liberty measure have had more urgent matters to deal with this election cycle. He declined to name members of the coalition because, he said, religious communities involved in controversial ballot measures — such as Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in California — have suffered vandalism and harassment.
“Some of our allies have had pressing challenges this year and have stepped back for this cycle,” Minnery said.
Minnery said then that recurring problems of government interference with or the exclusion of religious people and groups prompted the ballot measure.
