Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Shane Goldmacher’s report (Capitol Weekly, October 5) on the
faith-community’s efforts to pass Proposition 85, the parental-notification
initiative, tells only part of the story. We in the mainstream, Protestant
communities of faith, oppose this proposition as a threat to young women
without supportive families and as an intolerable imposition on family
intimacy.

California Church IMPACT represents over 5,000 congregations and 31
Protestant and Christian Orthodox denominations with 1.5 million members.
Our ballot recommendations are distributed annually, reaching well beyond
our membership. We offer “IMPACT Sundays” where activist members distribute
our nonpartisan guides to their congregations, friends and families. Last
year we opposed Proposition 73, identical to 85, and helped secure its
defeat. We intend to do so again in 2006.

The mainstream Protestant communities of faith love their children and want
to assure their safety and promote family communication. But we also
understand our responsibility to teens without those resources. Too many
girls get pregnant from incest, too many face abusive and rejecting parents
or guardians, and too many take matters into their own hands from fear of
revealing their pregnancies. We believe we must take into account the needs
of these abandoned teens as well as those of our own children. Teens need
counseling, not coercion. We further reject the initiative’s arrogant notion
that our families need legalistic help to promote communication.
That tramples on our family values

It is important that Capitol Weekly acknowledges the fact that not all
persons of faith, not even all Christians, think the same on these issues.
California Church IMPACT is a force to be reckoned with as we also promote
our moral values in the public arena.

Elizabeth Sholes
Director of Public Policy
California Council of Churches/California Church IMPACT