Bringing a love for justice and a love for truth to the ballot box

By Archbishop Charles Chaput

Indignation in the wake of Matt Shepard's recent murder is not just appropriate. It's necessary. Hopefully, it will help prevent such crimes in the future. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) wrote in 1986, "Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors whenever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, action and law." Simply put, nothing justifies violence against people perceived to be on society's margins — including homosexuals.

These words are not just theoretical. The full range of Church teaching on human rights and the issue of homosexuality needs to be considered carefully by all of us, and in a special way by every Fort Collins Catholic voter on Nov. 3. The reason is obvious: Matt Shepard's death in a Fort Collins hospital earlier this month directly impacts a local debate about amending the city code to ban various types of discrimination.

Specifically, a proposed Ordinance 21 would revise the city's Human Rights Code to more effectively prevent discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation practices, based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, age disability, familial status and public assistance status. Ordinance 22, if passed, would further amend the city code to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Overall, the ordinances read in such a way that good people with good motives will legitimately disagree on how best to cast their vote. Both ordinances do have flaws, however, which bear noting. For example, Ordinance 21's use of the term "spousal equivalent" in Section 13-17 (c)(3), which governs employee fringe benefits and insurance coverage, has troubling implications, both morally and legally. In the Christian understanding of marriage, no "equivalent" to a spouse can exist. Ordinance 22 compounds the difficulty by extending the purported equivalence to homosexual partners.

Additionally, while religious organizations (such as churches) are exempt from compliance based on their religious convictions, no such moral or religious exemption exists for individuals. Obviously, such an exemption could be abused as a cover for bigotry. But in the case of doctors involved in fertility work, for example, what would happen if a physician opposed to homosexual sexual partnerships on religious or other moral grounds declined to perform the artificial insemination of a lesbian couple? In this case, the language of the ordinances would seem to require such a physician to violate his or her conscience. If so, local voters do have grounds for concern.

My purpose today is to remind Catholic voters what the Church teaches and why. Briefly, three principles apply.

First, the basic human rights to life, work, food and housing belong to all people. That obviously includes persons with a homosexual orientation. As the CDF noted in Non-Discrimination Against Homosexual Persons: Some Considerations in Response to Legislative Proposals, a follow-up to its 1986 document, "Homosexual persons . . . have the same rights as all persons, including the right of not being treated in a manner which offends their dignity." Catholics should work to defend these rights.

Second, however, " . . . these rights are not absolute. They can be legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct" (emphasis added). The Catholic faith holds that homosexual sexual behavior is, by its nature, ordered away from the purposes for which God created human sexuality, and therefore is gravely wrong. In the long run, it is both individually and socially destructive.

Third, Catholics need to promote and defend the sanctity of marriage and family life, not just at home but also in the public square. That means working to protect the priority and unique legal status which society extends to the marital covenant between a man and a woman. Nothing is the "equivalent" of a marriage between a man and woman. Attempts to create parallel protections for alternative, non-marital relationships can easily undermine marriage and the family, and will inevitably have far-reaching consequences.

My hope for the Catholic voters of Fort Collins is that they will bring both a love for justice and a love for truth to the voting booth Nov. 3. However one chooses to vote, we have an obligation to turn away from violence and hatred directed against homosexual persons.

We're also obliged to speak the truth about homosexual sexual activity without embarrassment, and work to build a culture where marriage and family can thrive.