Predictably, the Colorado Council of Churches is opposing the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, Amendment 46, that would bar the state from engaging in preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity.
The group says Amendment 46 would eliminate things like science and math tutoring for young women and closing the gender gap in pay.
“Progress has been made in overcoming the effects of centuries of discrimination against women and people of color, but we are not there yet. As people of faith, we feel called to stand with them,” said Jim Ryan, the council’s executive director.
And, presumably, Colorado must continue discriminating against some of its citizens based on their race, etc., until we are “there,” wherever “there” is.
Initiatives identical to the one in Colorado have passed, by substantial majorities, in California, Washington, and Michigan, and been implemented. It would strengthen the Colorado churchpeople’s argument if they could point to any “science and math tutoring for young women” that have been eliminated anywhere as a result of these initiatives. It would also be useful if the faithful could give a few examples of the sorts of programs aimed at “closing the gender gap in pay” the Colorado they think would be put at risk.
Faith is often said to be blind, but in Colorado it’s apparently dumb as well.
According to its Mission Statement, the Colorado Council of Churches is “more an organism than an organization, more a body than a bureaucracy, more becoming than being.”
I’d say it’s not there yet.
The other problem is the dumbness of lumping together sex and race. If a black person is discriminated against, then his (black) children will start out behind, and then their (black) children, etc. So one can make an arguable point about “centuries of discrimination.”
But that makes no sense in discussing sex. Women do not fall further behind because women were discriminated against in the past. Women tend to descend from men just as much as they do from women.
The group says Amendment 46 would eliminate things like science and math tutoring for young women
Since women currently receive 58 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in the United States (http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/womcolge.htm) just what is the purpose of tutoring women in science and math? Oh, wait I know. Those are the only areas where men still outperform women. We can’t allow that to be the case. If we can help women perform better in math and science, maybe we can raise the percentage of women graduates to 75% or more. If this were a sporting event they would be accused of running up the score!
Cannot help but comment on the overt biased expressed by previous bloggers on the subject of women and tutoring. Women don’t need “tutoring”, young women need to be told they can, rather than they can’t. Just one more insensitive man pushing his illuminati initiative! I’m a Colorado native and find the lefty elitists so frustrating in this town, and no where is is more evident than in the political leftist sector!