Posted on 11/27/2007 9:38:43 PM PST by Coleus
From State funding which would have included lethal embryonic research to vouchers, to defending Marriage, referendums across the country should concern Catholic voters. Voters in New Jersey defeated a proposal that would have authorized $450 million in bonds for stem-cell research projects, but an effort in Utah to repeal a schools voucher program was successful.
The ballot questions were among 34 initiatives or referendums held in six states Nov. 6 during off-year elections. Another nine questions had been decided in elections earlier in the year. The Catholic bishops in five New Jersey dioceses had urged rejection of Public Question 2 and launched an educational campaign to help Catholic voters distinguish between adult stem-cell research, which the church supports, and stem-cell research involving the destruction of human embryos, which the church strongly opposes.
"Although the intent of the bond question is to provide funding of embryonic stem cells, it does provide for some funding of research into adult stem cells," Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, N.J., wrote in the Oct. 24 issue of the archdiocesan newspaper. "Our hope is that all funding would be devoted to adult stem cells because of the moral dilemma that embryonic stem-cell research causes," he added, urging Catholics to "let their elected representatives know that, if they empower our state to enter into financing stem-cell research, New Jersey must concentrate its efforts on research that produces true benefits instead of another series of promises." After voters rejected the bond question, 53 percent to 47 percent, Patrick Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, told Catholic News Service, "The people have spoken and we are pleased that our message was understood."
The Utah vouchers law, approved by the Utah Legislature and governor but repealed Nov. 6 by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin, would have provided tuition vouchers ranging from $500 to $3,000 for each new student enrolled in a private school in the state. Opponents said the plan, which would have been available to all students regardless of family income, would weaken public schools.
Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City said he was disappointed in the vote since the vouchers plan "would have been a real win for both public and private schools." "I believe that vouchers are good policy and good for our children," he said in a statement. "I have confidence that in time the truth in our argument will be seen." In the weeks leading up to the vote, the Intermountain Catholic diocesan newspaper published a series of articles by the diocesan Office of Catholic Schools correcting false claims made about the voucher program. It noted, for example, that Utah Catholic schools "already have a higher degree of racial diversity than the general Utah school population" and accept mild to moderately disabled students, not just "high achievers."
Citing a study by Utah State University, the schools office said the proposed vouchers program would save public schools nearly $1 billion over 13 years. It also noted that Catholic schools gave more than $4.8 million in tuition assistance to families during the last school year. Also defeated Nov. 6 was an Oregon proposal that would have raised the state cigarette tax by 85 cents and designated the funds for children's health care. The Oregon Catholic Conference took no position on the proposal, but an editorial in the Oct. 19 edition of the Catholic Sentinel, archdiocesan newspaper in Portland, Ore., criticized major tobacco companies for their $10 million effort to defeat the measure.
"Big tobacco has a sordid history of doing anything, spending anything and saying anything to protect their ill-gotten gains," the editorial said. "There is another tradition: Long-standing church teaching translates to Catholics' robust support of passage of Ballot Measure 50." The measure failed by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent.
In April of this year, an advisory measure in Alaska asking whether state and local governments should be banned from providing benefits to same-sex couples was approved by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin. A subsequent move to bring a constitutional amendment that would limit marriage benefits to married couples only to the voters in 2008 failed in the state House of Representatives, however. The Alaskan Catholic bishops support the proposed amendment.
I thought the people of Utah were smarter than that. Guess I was wrong.
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