🚀 go-pugleaf

Marianne Goodland (mgoodlan@odin.cair.du.edu) wrote:
: Lynn Turriff     <lynnt@mail.oregon.com> wrote:
: >Chris, does it not occur to you that if enough people feel strongly enough      
: >to propose a Constitutional amendment on this issue that perhaps there is      
: >some merit in it?   

: Actually, that's not true. The people of Colorado did not
: propose this amendment; it was shoved down our throats by
: Of the People, Inc. a Christian Coalition affiliate in
: Virginia.  They PAID petitioners to gather signatures, which
: tells me the backers of this amendment didn't even have the
: support of enough people who believed in it to get REAL
: citizen initiative behind it. 

	Colorado used to have a law which forbade paying petition
circulators while gathering signatures to put initiatives on the state
ballot.  But the US Supreme court threw out this law as unconstitutional. 
Now, as a result, rather than serving as a check by the citizenry against
powerful, rich, vested interests, the initiative process is now largely a
tool of whoever has the most money to hire petition circulators.

: Its drubbing on Tuesday was well deserved. Citizen initiatives
: belong to the people of a given state, not to special
: interest groups who want to change our schools to reflect
: their religious agenda, which this amendment certainly would
: have done.

	We Coloradans were badly burned by the anti-gay "Amendment 2" 
which passed a couple years back.  It, too, was heavily backed by 
out-of-state Religious Right organizations and money.  I think Coloradans 
are more wary now of out-of-state interests who wish to use our state as 
a proving ground for their latest attempts to build a bridge to the 19th 
century.

: It also would have been a disaster to anyone who adopts a
: child in this state as it would have given the birth
: parent an inalienable right to reclaim his/her child anytime
: they saw fit.

	It certainly would have left this issue unresolved, until 
litigation established precedents.

: When our former senator (and devoutly
: Christian) Bill Armstrong said this amendment was
: bad news, people really started looking at what this
: amendment would mean.

	Yes.  Sen. Armstrong's opposition to the Parental Rights 
Amendment pretty well deflated claims that opposition to the PRA was 
limited to extremists ultra-liberals with a secret agenda for destroying 
"Traditional Family Values."

: Marianne Goodland
: Denver

Chris