RALEIGH — Let me see if I have this straight.

For years, the state of North Carolina has provided a cash subsidy, a Legislative Tuition Grant, to students who choose to attend private colleges in the state rather than a public university. But since the program began, it has specifically excluded students pursuing degrees in religion at seminaries — even though students pursuing degrees in religion at private, even church-affiliated universities were eligible.

So this year, Rep. Skip Stam (R-Wake) and other lawmakers decide to propose legislation to equalize the treatment of the two students groups by offering the same Legislative Tuition Grant (worth $1,800 at current rates) to the seminary students.

At which point the civil libertarians cry foul. We can’t offer taxpayer money to Bible colleges, they complained, because students have to profess the Christian faith to attend. It would open the state up to lawsuit alleging tax-funded discrimination.

Huh?

Right now, our government is discriminating against North Carolina young people who choose to attend religious institutions to receive their religious education. They can attend secular, or nominally religious, schools with taxpayer money but not seminaries. On its face, this seems to me to be a gross abrogration of the state’s responsibility to be neutral with respect to religion and to respect the deeply held religious faith of every citizen (whatever that faith may be).

This issue perfectly illustrates the clash of world views that manifests itself across a host of public policy debates. Some believe that government should take no notice of, or have any relationship with, any religion. Strictly enforced, this standard should prohibit making Christmas and Easter holidays for public schools or government offices. It should prohibit professions of religious faith by public officials or at public meetings. In the area of higher education funding, it should certainly prohibit the taxpayer subsidy of anything remotely having to do with religion, including enrollment at Wake Forest, Duke, Campbell, or other institutions with a religious affiliation or origin.

The other view is that such hostility to religious faith and practice is incompatible with a truly free society. It recognizes that government’s interactions with religious institutions — be they in the education sphere, the human services sphere, or politics itself — must be prudently but strictly neutral. That is, if private but secular groups are allowed to apply for funds to accomplish a public purpose, religious ones should also be allowed to apply. If tax dollars are spent educating students in a wholly secular setting, and all students are compelled to attend some kind of certifiable school, then provision must be made for parents whose religious views lead them to seek an educational setting that more closely reflects their beliefs and values.

Neutrality is the mirror opposite of discrimination. Apparently most members of the N.C. House agreed — they passed the Legislative Tuition Grant expansion Wednesday.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.