You've misreported Obama's position on what faith-based organizations would be allowed to do.

The would NOT be allowed to use faith in hiring decisions. This was misreported in some news accounts. But see the memo from the Obama campaign below and you'll see that it was in error. Please correct this in your diary.

"The new partnership will not endanger the separation of church and state, so long as a few basic principles are followed. First, if an organization gets a federal grant, it will not be permitted to use that grant money to proselytize to the people it serves, and the group will forbidden to discriminate against them on the basis of their religion. And groups will be required to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws in their hiring practices—including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

http://thepage.time.com/obama-campaign-memo-for-tuesday-july-1/

The rule on federal money going only to organizational ventures that don't discriminate based on faith is fine -- unless you just don't want any government funding of any program run by a religious group.

After all, how could you give ANY money to religious groups if you had the rule that the group can't use faith as a criteria in non-government funded programs. If that was the criteria, then you would be saying that the group couldn't discriminate by hiring a Catholic to be priest, a Methodist to be minister, a Jew to be a rabbi,etc.

You have a huge double standard here. Every politician moves to the center after the primary. They all do it and they all have to do it in our two party system.

And I still think you're wrong on hiring/firing decisions for faith-based groups. Every "faith based group" HAS to do some hiring based on religion or they couldn't hire the appropriate faith leader. If you don't want federal money going to groups that discriminate based on faith at all, then you don't want money going to faith based groups at all.

Why not just admit that -- that you don't think there should be federal money at all for faith based groups? Because there is NO means by which federal money can go to a faith based groups if your standard is that they can't take faith into account in hiring at all.

And why would you find Obama's position on this surprising or a shift? His community work was largely based in relationships with faith communities and institutions.

Furthermore, this line of argument reminds me of the Bush I and Bush II gag rule policies wherein birth control clinics couldn't get money if they even referred women to birth control clinics even if the money was kept completely separate. I don't like that at all.