Colorado bishops urge YES on Amendment 43, NO on Referendum I

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As reported in the Pueblo Chieftain and confirmed on the Archdiociese of Denver website.

I had already planned on voting for Amendment 43 and originally considered voting for Ref I, thinking that “domestic partnership” doesn’t necessarily mean “gay marriage”, but this is what changed my mind on Referendum I…

Referendum I specifically excludes related same-sex couples and unmarried male-female couples from “domestic partnerships”. Proponents want to be sure that what we’re trying to legitimize here is indeed a form of “gay marriage”.
Referendum I trumps Amendment 43 which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Everywhere “marriage” occurs in law, “domestic partnership” will be inserted. Everywhere “spouse” occurs in law, “domestic partner” will be inserted. It basically reduces Amendment 43 to the fight over terminology – marriage becomes a type of “domestic partnership” that happens to be between a man and a woman, while “domestic partnership” will be a type of marriage that is between two members of the same sex. So if Referendum I passes it renders Amendment 43 as a battle over the word “marriage”, but that is far short of what it was meant to be.

Referendum I will give equal consideration to “domestic partnerships” for the adoption of children or placement into foster homes. This means that if you do not have a will or family to take your children if you die early, they may be raised by a same-sex couple. Children who are taken away by Social Services could be placed into same-sex “domestic partnership” homes. From the frying pan into the fire. I wouldn’t want this social experiment on my own children, or anyone’s children.

Referendum I actually gives GREATER tax benefits to “domestic partnerships” than it does to marriages. Referendum I “prevents” domestic partners from filing joint tax returns. Interesting how they use the word “prevents”. You’ve all heard of the marriage penalty right?: A married couple is taxed more heavily than the combined tax they would pay as individual filers. Referendum I “prevents” domestic partners from filing joint tax returns! I wish my wife and I could be “prevented” from that also!

Anyone interested in helping to make phone calls to get out the vote, please contact the Colorado Catholic Conference. Conference staff will be happy to help them get involved. Please help with your vote and any other ways your time and courage allows.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
~ Sir Edmund Burke

**“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
~ Jesus
**
 
Hi Everyone - I hope you’re all doing well.

I need some help out in the real world. I have friends who are gay and they are some of the lovliest people I know. They have a beautiful home and are always so gracious, warm, and loving.

Meanwhile, I have friends who are Catholics who recently divorced and their children are torn up about it. My gay friends are asking why with all the other issues in the world the Catholic church spends so much of its energy fighting against them.

One of those gay friends works in a child welfare organization and he sees the terrible things parents do to their kids. He says most if not all of the kids come from heterosexual, married, Christian families. He also says says there are more than 800 kids in foster care in Colorado and millions of Catholics and Christians. The religious people are fighting against gay marriage, gay adoption, and gay foster parenting yet they aren’t stepping up to the plate to provide loving homes to the kids in foster care.

Lastly, the Christian arguments against gay marriage focus on marriage being an institution and foundation of society - yet the church allows annulments and divorce. I think he said something like 40% of all marriages end in divorce so he’s asking me to explain how marriage can be a foundation and institution when it fails so much.

Anyway, I’m confused and not able to answer him. I enjoy the dialog and conversation and he’s being very nice about it. It’s just making me think that maybe our Catholic priorities should shift to something that makes more sense.
 
NDM said:
Hi Everyone - I hope you’re all doing well.

I need some help out in the real world. I have friends who are gay and they are some of the lovliest people I know. They have a beautiful home and are always so gracious, warm, and loving.

Meanwhile, I have friends who are Catholics who recently divorced and their children are torn up about it. My gay friends are asking why with all the other issues in the world the Catholic church spends so much of its energy fighting against them.

One of those gay friends works in a child welfare organization and he sees the terrible things parents do to their kids. He says most if not all of the kids come from heterosexual, married, Christian families. He also says says there are more than 800 kids in foster care in Colorado and millions of Catholics and Christians. The religious people are fighting against gay marriage, gay adoption, and gay foster parenting yet they aren’t stepping up to the plate to provide loving homes to the kids in foster care.

Lastly, the Christian arguments against gay marriage focus on marriage being an institution and foundation of society - yet the church allows annulments and divorce. I think he said something like 40% of all marriages end in divorce so he’s asking me to explain how marriage can be a foundation and institution when it fails so much.

Anyway, I’m confused and not able to answer him. I enjoy the dialog and conversation and he’s being very nice about it. It’s just making me think that maybe our Catholic priorities should shift to something that makes more sense.
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I guess my response would be that what your friend is saying is anecdotal evidence that doesn’t really tell us much. He may well see that the majority of abuse cases come from heterosexuals simply because the vast majority of adoptions and foster parents actually are by heterosexual parents. But statistics seem to show that married households are the safest place for women and children: heritage.org/Research/Family/bg1732.cfm
frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02

The bottom line is that it is wrong, and when you do things that are wrong bad things happen to you or to others or both. It’s a difficult issue to discuss with those who believe that freedom to do what you want to do is the most important thing, rather than truth being the most important thing and freedom being the means to act in accord with it.

I have a relative and her gay partner who adopted a child who was going to be aborted. It is difficult to argue against that if the alternative would be that the child was murdered. However, they are finding that it is very difficult and the child has behavioral problems. They attend meetings specifically for homosexual parents to discuss the problems that are prevalent, such as their children’s behavioral problems.

Granted, the same problems also are more likely to occur with your divorced friends’ children than if they were able to maintain a good marriage and stay together (the younger the children the more likely for there to be problems). And the same problems would likely surface for other single-parent households where the parents never married or one of the spouses died. Still, there is something to be said for the natural law that every child has a mother and father. God (or if you’re not religious, Mother Nature) has designed it that way. We should do what we can to ensure that every child has a mother and father. Adoption by homosexuals denies this possibility at the outset. That’s cruel.

Your friend’s comments on the divorce rate are well taken and it’s a serious problem. If 40% of marriages end in divorce then 40% of children will enter into a more precarious position without a household with a mother and father (assuming that these marriages have on average an equal number of children than marriages that remain intact – which I doubt). 100% of the children adopted by homosexuals are denied a household with a mother or father. Obviously I don’t need to cite any studies for that.

I’d ask your friends if they really think it’s ok to deny a particular child (one adopted by homosexual parents) a mother and father by default.
 
Hi - thank you for your quick reply. You have given me a lot to think about.

My challenge is that I love good debates and so falling back on “it’s just wrong” doesn’t really encourage good, logical discussion. You are right that gays who adopt kids deny them the opportunity to have a mother and a father. I’m a little challenged by the fact that on an average day there are 520,000 kids on foster care who don’t have either. So should they float around in the system while they wait or should they be allowed to be loved by one, maybe two people who may not be the ideal?

I have encouraged church members to consider adoption - and some do. It seems that for every one Christian family that steps up to adopt there are 1000 that fight against gay adoption. I’m not sure we’ll ever really settle the gay adoption debate. So my real hope is that the 1000 who fight, focus their money and energy on positive things like building strong families, finding ways to lower divorce rates, and providing good homes for kids in need.

Anyway, my apologies for a long entry. It’s easy to love my gay friends - in many ways they are ideal citizens and community members. I’m just finding it difficult to bridge the gap between what my church believes and what I experience in real life. Writing about it helps.
 
Yes, it’s a difficult issue, especially if you have loved ones who think that you are unjustly discriminating against them rather than having the good of the children and the common good of society in mind. Like all people, gays are lovable too (and like all people, some more than others).

My point about saying that it’s just wrong is that I think for many people today right/wrong is a secondary consideration compared to “freedom”. Freedom should be at the service of truth, rather than vice versa. Instead, many discussions become a discussion of legal rights (freedoms) rather than a discussion of what is truly right or wrong. Our discussions should seek truth first and then how our freedom can be used to pursue that truth.

Here is some more information from Catholic Answers for you to think about:
catholic.com/library/gay_marriage.asp (See section titled:
What about situations in which homosexuals adopt children or use artificial insemination?)

Can you point to some references regarding the 525,000 kids in foster care on average? I assume that’s national? I’m not aware of stats that compare foster parents to single-parent or same-sex parent families, but they do have at least a temporary mother and father, and sometimes foster parents become adoptive parents.

Also, homosexual parents ARE able to adopt, but I don’t think they should be given equal consideration as married (husband/wife) couples, which Referendum I would grant. Child placement agencies that receive any government funding and that currently prefer placement with married couples would likely have that funding stripped away unless equal consideration were given to same-sex domestic partnerships.
 
There is a sleeper provision in Referendum I regarding Domestic Partnerships that could provide a cause of action against churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious employers should they discharge or refuse to hire homosexual persons in domestic partnerships:

rmfc.org/IssuesGuide/ChurchEmploymentAlertRefI.html
 
Thanks for posting this.
There hasn’t been much good info this election, just a bunch of adults throwing insults at each other. I am happy it is almost over.
 
KittyKat said:
Thanks for posting this.
There hasn’t been much good info this election, just a bunch of adults throwing insults at each other. I am happy it is almost over.
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I agree. I have found some of them entertaining though. It’s funny how the politicians here in Colorado start donning their cowboy hats and fly-fishing gear when it’s time to put their political commercials together. Beauprez, Ritter, and John Salazar come to mind, as well as Pete Coors and Ken Salazar in previous years. And then you have the many commercials where the politician is surrounded by people who are hanging on their every word and nodding their heads as if he’s saying something profound. For once I’d like to see a commercial that shows the politician with his mouth shut LISTENING to the people around him.
 
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