Not surprisingly, religion is sacred in Washington these days. Justice, however, is not.

That seems to be the situation with George W. Bush’s Justice Department, which now is obsessed with defending the rights of groups to hand out candy canes to schoolchildren with loony, creepy messages about the red stripes representing the blood of Christ and white representing his purity rather than prosecuting hate crimes and protecting minority voters against laws cobbled to weaken their voting strength.

The New York Times recently reported that the Bush administration, in yet another ballsy attempt to turn precedent on its head, has virtually recast itself as the defender of the rights of religious groups more than civil rights. 

Among other things, it has intervened on behalf of groups like the Salvation Army; groups that believe they ought to receive federal money for programs, in spite of the fact they discriminate in hiring only those who share their beliefs. It has also supported groups who believe they ought to be able to send schoolchildren home with religious literature and religious messages.

Like the ones in Massachusetts with a religious message as twisted as the candy canes they were handing out.

At the same time, the department’s pursuance of civil rights and hate crimes cases has plummeted. According to the Times, the department has initiated only one case this year challenging a voting plan that might dilute the strength of black voters while, during a similar period in the Clinton administration, eight were initiated.

Now, I don’t have a problem with the department defending the rights of people to practice their religion. In fact, since Sept. 11, there’s an argument to be made in favor of stepping up such enforcement -- especially since some municipalities that equate Islam with terrorism have tried to rework zoning laws to stop Muslims from building mosques near them.

To me, that kind of defense isn’t about giving people the right to practice their religion as much as it is about curtailing prejudice.

That also reflects the true spirit of what anti-discrimination laws are about -- and the ones that the Justice Department is supposed to vigorously uphold.

But there is a thin line between using the law to protect people’s rights to worship and using it to permit what borders on proselytizing. What’s also ironic is that the department has diverted much of its energies from fighting racial and gender discrimination to pushing for rights and resources for groups whose religions may call for them to practice the same kind of discrimination that it is supposed to fight.

And that’s bound to come back and bite them.

Yet, a bigger contradiction lies in all of this: The Bush administration, which apparently sees religious ideology as a sop to the religious right and as a route to cleansing the nation of its godless liberalism, is far from being the virtuous regime that its obsession with religion would imply.

This is, after all, the administration that rushed us into an unnecessary war with Iraq because it cared less about the truth and more about oil profits and fantasies about spreading democracy. It exaggerated intelligence reports and ignored credible evidence that could have helped us avoid this war -- a war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens.

My Bible tells me there’s nothing godly in that.

This is also the administration that watched as thousands of desperate New Orleans’ citizens begged for help from their rooftops and from the Louisiana Superdome -- and did nothing for days.

Then there’s the dishonesty.

Just recently, for example, the House Oversight Committee found that E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee -- a possible violation of a law requiring that such records be preserved. It continues to pull shady tactics that have little to do with pushing justice, but more to do with furthering political ends.

Then again, for the Bush administration, religion has never been about doing the right thing as much as it has been about doing the convenient thing. It’s easier to expend energy defending the kooky candy cane proselytes than it is to examine voting plans that might hurt black voters who aren’t likely to vote Republican.

So all this religion in the Justice Department comes at the expense of civil rights and voting rights. It comes packaged in ideology, not truth.

And once again, justice suffers.