And keep in mind that deciding against protecting gay men and women is NOT what the referendum item did. Rather, it mooted several cities’ individual decisions, which affected no-one but those cities, to affirmatively protect gay rights. These protections offered nothing more than a “psychic injury” to the rest of the Colorado population, and still they felt impelled to slap it down. So, too much regulation may be bad, but (1) regulating to protect insular minority groups and (2) a regulation that doesn’t affect you are not examples of that.

I think it’s well within the rights of CO lawmakers to decide that sexual preferences are not the basis for special rights.

Another factor: Colorado is growing by leaps and bounds from the recently finished Denver Tech Center, which has created thousands of computer related jobs. Computer techs tend to be a little more liberal, so things are starting to shift. Last election, we voted in a Democrat governor to replace the Republican, and send more Democrats to congress; however Bush still won the state. Since then, however, more techs have come in and more and more young people are getting involved in politics. Also, many people see this as just another version of the South Dakota debacle. This is obviously an attempt to prevent abortion (likely brought upon us because of the new Planned Parenthood) and people see it as such. Remember the end result in SD?

On a separate note altogether, should the initiative pass, it won’t last its first court challenge.

Masturbation is sinful not just because it involves pleasure of the flesh, but also because it wastes precious, precious sperm, which is life. What’s that you say? Sperm isn’t exactly alive and has only half the necessary genetic material? Well then, life surely must start at the next possible step and not a moment later!

They just update their standards to the next-most conservative option each time science proves them wrong (well, sometimes they update).

And I wanted to mention that I certainly appreciate the juxtaposition of topics here – gays aren’t protected, but unborn fetuses (feti?) are. What, then, if the fetus happens to be gay?

Wouldn’t you then need to investigate every single “miscarriage” to see if the woman caused it in some way? Would smoking or drinking while pregnant constitute aggravated assault?

Since up to 25% of all pregnancies may end in spontaneous abortion, often before the woman even realizes, should we monitor all women to know when and why a pregnancy ends?

If they pass this, I predict a quick reversal and severe backlash against the radicals pushing it.