August 18, 2023 12:36 PM UTC

Don't Discriminate Against...Our Ability to Discriminate?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Catholic Archdiocese is wading into the issue of Colorado’s new Universal Preschool program with a disgusting and ridiculous lawsuit, proving once again that for the Archdiocese, there is never a wrong time to do the wrong thing.

As Elizabeth Hernandez reports for The Denver Post:

The Denver Catholic Archdiocese along with two of its parishes is suing the state alleging their First Amendment rights are violated because their desire to exclude LGBTQ parents, staff and kids from Archdiocesan preschools keeps them from participating in Colorado’s new universal preschool program.

The program is intended to provide every child 15 hours per week of state-funded preschool in the year before they are eligible for kindergarten. To be eligible, though, schools must meet the state’s non-discrimination requirements.

There are other issues associated with the rollout of Gov. Jared Polis‘ signature proposal to provide free state-funded preschool for Colorado families, but those arguments are significantly more complicated (including a recently-filed lawsuit by a handful of school districts). This complaint from the Denver Archdiocese is much more straightforward: They want to be allowed to discriminate against certain Colorado families AND still be allowed to collect checks from the State of Colorado for providing preschool services. 

Let’s break out a few more sections of the Post story separately:

The Denver Archdiocese said in the suit they do not believe adhering to their religious beliefs against accepting LGBTQ people qualifies as discrimination. The Denver Post published written guidance last year issued by the Denver Archdiocese to its Catholic schools on the handling of LGBTQ issues, including telling administrators not to enroll or re-enroll transgender or gender non-conforming students and explaining that gay parents should be treated differently than heterosexual couples…

The Denver Archdiocese doesn’t think THEIR kind of discrimination is REALLY discrimination? They literally tell staff that gay parents should be treated differently than heterosexual couples.

What’s their real argument here? It’s only gay people!

We’re not going to do the “dictionary definition of discrimination” thing, because that would insult the intelligence of anyone reading this. Suffice it to say that you are discriminating if you are intentionally excluding a particular group of people based on specific characteristics. If you’re trying to argue about the definition of the word “discrimination,” then you’ve already lost.

The lawsuit said enrolling children with gay parents into an Archdiocesan school “is likely to lead to intractable conflicts” because a “Catholic school cannot treat a same-sex couple as a family equivalent to the natural family without compromising its mission and Catholic identity.”

We can’t disagree here — nor do we understand why a same-sex couple would even want to enroll their children in a Catholic preschool — but that’s really not the point of the Archdiocese complaint.

The lawsuit is seeking a jury trial and for the state to reverse its decision and allow the Denver Archdiocese to participate in the universal preschool program while giving them the ability to exclude LGBTQ students, staff and parents from their schools.

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”60%”]“When you are publicly funded, you have to agree with the basic values: We don’t discriminate…When we publicly support preschool, that means preschool for everybody, every kid.”

— Governor Jared Polis (KDVR, 8/17/23)[/mantra-pullquote]

There it is.

Again, the point here is that the Archdiocese wants to be treated financially like any other preschool program despite the fact that it is very different because of its transparent discrimination policies. Nobody is saying that the Archdiocese can’t discriminate against certain groups of people based on their religious views, although that’s pretty gross in and of itself. The State of Colorado is just saying, We’re not going to give you money for preschool if you’re going to discriminate about who gets to attend your school. 

For his part, Gov. Polis has a very simple response. From Fox 31 Denver:

“I think our focus has always been: the kids first, of course no discrimination, serve everybody if you want to take public funds, and it’s great to see so many preschoolers going back to school across the state,” Polis said Thursday…

…For Polis, the issue is simple: Do not discriminate, and you can have access to state dollars.

“I’m not commenting on specific lawsuits, but obviously, if you run a preschool that doesn’t receive state money, you can run it the way you want,” Polis said.

Nick Reaves, an attorney representing the Archdiocese, has his own asinine logic:

“Families have to choose between receiving a Catholic education and sending their kids to a Catholic school or getting a free preschool education at a secular school. And for parents who have worked hard and sacrificed to send their kids to a Catholic school, it’s not fair that Colorado is saying, ‘If you pull your kids out and go to any secular, private preschool, we’ll give you this tuition for preschool.’”

This is completely absurd. Colorado’s Universal Preschool program was not created to convince parents to move their kids out of a Catholic preschool. The purpose of the program is to give all Colorado kids — even the ones with same-sex parents — access to preschool programs.

This argument is, of course, part of broader discussion about school voucher programs, whose proponents inevitably come across the same problem. Not only do they think it should be totally fair to discriminate against an entire class of people…they want taxpayer money to help them advance their biases. This doesn’t make much sense, as Polis said to KDVR:

“If folks want to remain private and omit certain parents, they can do that but they won’t be funded for universal preschool by the state.”

It’s really that simple. If you want to be a bigoted asshat, that’s your decision — but the rest of Colorado shouldn’t have to help you.