Dear Readers,
The following are my thoughts based on my personal observation of the Roman Catholic Church and its now bullshit teachings about reproductive justice and special preference for heterosexual families. I can tell you that Parochial school education is so out for our son, I can’t wait to reveal all here. Consider this following paragraphs what could be in a Denver Post op. ed. piece because people need to be fully awake to the fact that the Roman Catholic church is so rife with hypocrisy that Jesus would probably burn the whole thing down first.
My name is Beth Taurasi. I was baptized at Enunciation Catholic Church in Lake Mary, Florida. Later, my brothers were born and baptized at St. Teresa’s Catholic Church. This church, like so many other Catholic Churches and schools, teaches a lot of hypocrisy. It starts with the prekindergarten year. The Roman Catholic Church claims to follow Christ, but recent headlines across our country and especially in Denver’s Archdiocesan area prove this so well. When I entered the fifth grade, I had been transferred to a parochial school, naturally it was that attached to St. teresa’s parish in Titusville. There was a glaring difference between this school and the local public elementary school, Imperial Estates Elementary School, located a short walk away from my former residential base at Oak Trails Meadowridge subdivision. All you had to do was walk around my old street, Little Oak Circle, and there would be a bike path you followed, and there you entered Imperial Estates Elementary. At that school, there had been a wide variety of races and faces, kids were healthy, they played and learned. During this time, my parents insisted my brothers and I attend religious education at St. Teresa’s. Later, about my fifth grade year, it was decided much to my chagrin that we’d be all attending that same school. St. Teresa’s was a bad choice and I can name thousands of reasons why. There were problems from the beginning. Open the STS handbook, and you might find the dress code quite alarming. For girls and boys, you had to don a prescribed uniform. In fifth grade, I was given a pinafore jumper, later I had to wear a puke plaid skirt. The skirts and jumpers were ugly on the outside, only that is subjective. We all had to wear these white polo shirts with the school’s emblem on them. I admit I’d woken up my share of times, then when I would attempt picking out said polo, sometimes I’d end up with a pink polo, my mom jokingly inquiring about whether it was “pink shirt day.” I wish that were the case.
It has become known that STS also did not have a very racially diverse student body. The faculty weren’t so much of a problem, however just about all the teachers were white. The student body was and probably still is a term my partner uses, “lily white.” The students are so white and if not, they are Puerto Rican. From my experience at the school, there were ZERO African American students to be seen or heard. We took Spanish at this school, and sadly, the children did not bother to immerse themselves in the Spanish language. Even my partner Clayton Jacobs, a resident of Arizona for a long time, could do much better at his Spanish and articulate the grammar tons better than these children could have done since kindergarten. It’s pretty abysmal when you have academic curricula also that go beyond elementary schools I’ve attended, Atlantis Elementary and Imperial Estates Elementary both, but yet when it comes to the way this school operated and still probably does today, students who are sexual minorities and who have disabilities better run for the hills. To start with, my parents enrolled me and the brothers in this school not for our own growth and development, but for their own interests only. Both my parents are proud Catholic school graduates and highly Catholic educated. All of us kiddos came out Catholic, baptized and receiving our First Communions at the appropriate times, and later we were given the Sacraments of Confirmation. My brother Danny later received the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, better known as he got married. His wife is a school psychologist I’m told, but my niece, Leah Taurasi, sadly could be strung along an educational war of wars that should never be fought with children in the crossfire. Leah’s whole family is not very friendly to sexual minorities. Had I even spoken one word about LGBTQ+ issues, who wants to bet my adopted father, David Taurasi, or my mother would pull out misguided scriptural passages to justify the abuse or genocide of LGBTQ+ people? Does anyone know how it might even feel for my son, Malcolm C. Jacobs, age four months, when he’s four years old perhaps? Children this young know who they are, and they know what their pronouns are. Malcolm so far goes by the pronouns “he, him, his.” I will probably train him to be an ally for the LGBTQ+ community, even if Dad thinks the whole pronouns thing is quite annoying. It is refreshing though to see Colorado professionals, social workers and teachers included, writing their pronouns in email signatures. No names but these people are showing us the way to welcoming LGBTQ+ people. St. Teresa School however, does not welcome anything that is deemed immoral. I can tell you the dark side of parochial education, and it can be summed up in three words: inadequate sex education.
From the fifth grade on up, the class of peers I was corralled with were expected to read what I call dangerous sexual propaganda. It’s not what GOP parents call “woke propaganda” either. It’s even more dangerous. New Creation textbooks were doled out each year, and we were forced to accept the contents as the Gospel Truth. No sooner than I left that wooden box of dead moral values that put women in a submissive position did I turn 17 and entered eleventh grade at Titusville High, I was subjected to all manner of guardianship abuse due to both my disability and so called naïveté. Sadly, my parents were mistaken to send me to a Roman Catholic school. The academics are above board, I’ll say that, but the moral education is sadly behind the times. The Archdiocesan programs in Denver are not the exception either. they follow a strongly bigoted teaching in the Catholic Church. I’ve heard my share of antigay slurs and excuses written in the Book of genesis, and sadly, more people might chant the hateful mantra of “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Because of this hateful mantra and many others, the Colorado Department of Early Childhood now faces a lawsuit. What is this lawsuit, you might ask? The Archdiocese of Denver claims it has the right under the First Amendment to bully and silence the voices of LGBTQ+ parents and children and staff. The same Archdiocese claims it has the right to be bigots. While we hold these truths, religious freedom included, to be more than self evident, let’s not forget that all human beings are not only created equal, but have value, dignity, and worth above all else. The godhead the Catholics praise daily, Jesus Christ, never spoke one word against anyone, no matter what they did or who they loved. In filing this lawsuit against the DEC, the archdiocese is throwing proverbial stones. Can we remember the passage in your bibles where Jesus clearly states at a public attempted stoning of a promiscuous woman, “Let those who have not sinned throw the first stone.” Everybody left. If we allow the Archdiocese to continue throwing stones at people who are at severe risk of physical and mental abuse of all types, then we are sinners ourselves. The Denver archbishop is nothing more than a bigot who does not care about women and young girls either. One opinion piece following the headlines about this lawsuit was written eloquently by a Catholic man, or some man but he clearly listed all the wrongs this archbishop partook in. All of these wrongs were designed to attack LGBTQ+ individuals. Abortion may be another hot button subject of the church, but let’s not forget that I personally would never abort. even in Wicca, we are told that we must “do no harm” as part of the read. We can do as we please, but we must not harm anything. For me, that included the tiny embryo that later became my precious firstborn child, a boy born to a father who had a prior child. This precious boy is everything I could ever ask for and maybe a lot more. His giggles and smiles delight every childcare professional and everybody around town. Malcolm is the happiest baby I’ve ever had and my first. that doesn’t help matters. But to see a world around us that tells my son that it is not okay to love a man because it’s against a god that truly doesn’t stand in this world sickens me. When Malcolm begins any education, I am hoping that Colorado will not push me to send him to an Archdiocesan preschool program. Private schools are so costly I could never imagine sending Malcolm to one. Catholic education is old and demented in its attempts to wipe out LGBTQ+ students because of a special interest in breeding more Catholic babies. so what does the Roman Catholic Church do to ensure a great big supply of children to indoctrinate in to their antigay and exclusive lifestyle that also looks bad for disabled kids? All they have to do is force young Catholic girls to become the breeders of Catholic babies, marry good Catholic husbands, and if you’re a lesbian, too bad. So sad. go straight to Hell. I do not accept this so called moral objection to being gay or lesbian. I could possibly be bisexual, but I’m revealing this and outing myself if that’s the truth. However, all of us should be alive in a world where compassion and empathy are the norm. Malcolm deserves to play with all kinds of children, and if heaven forbid my dear son tells me he likes boys, he likes girls, he likes both, I’m right here in the wings waiting to sit him down and have a heart to heart. Heaven forbid, if he wants to reveal a true nature of being female, I’m fine with making sure he is so well loved and cared for that … she becomes a blossoming woman. Either way, this being that I gave birth to is my whole world. When I saw that entire hullabaloo going on with the Archdiocese, I simply could not stop wondering what kinds of propaganda had been dumped on the kiddos at so many places in Denver. Regis High School, a Jesuit school, should be teaching true Jesuit values. They must include compassion and empathy, which means you give that gay dude a drink of water. You extend help to a lesbian couple. Give that transgender child a hug. Let us all in the door. Somebody’s knocking at the door now. Jesus said all of us could come to the water, and believing in him should not mean giving up the fact that you love someone different than what’s expected. Jesus loved all the little children and every single person on earth should learn from the teachings of Christ that we are not bound by bigotry and evil, and we will not be here waiting for another christian school to make mountains out of molehills when a gay person makes the news for something positive. My son Malcolm will be a revolutionary icon, but this remains to be seen and revealed. One thing I will be clear about though, this boy will never set foot in a parochial school. My niece, Leah, however, will suffer either stunted growth due to Governor Ron DeSantis’s reckless endangerment of Florida students and their intellect, or she could be indoctrinated into a pool of bigotry and forced to hide a piece of her only revealed when she becomes an adolescent. Our children are counting on the Colorado Department of Early Childhood to put the Archdiocese of Denver in check. These people should not receive funding for a universal preschool program if they think they can get away with bigotry and hate. We are not a society that codifies hate, and should remain thus. Any laws forbidding children from being who they are should all be banished to the history books.
Beth taurasi
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