Catholic Church can embrace Bible and science

Re: “Vatican rejects gender-affirming surgery, surrogacy,” April 9 news story

Tuesday’s story about the papal position regarding LGBTQ confirms that the Catholic Church hasn’t changed much since the 17th century when they banned Nicholas Copernicus’ book “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” which presented the scientific facts regarding the motions of celestial objects. Later, Galileo was charged with heresy because of his scientific investigations on the same subject. In other words, the Catholic Church was promoting the Bible as a scientific text and denying the scientific evidence to the contrary.

Now, the Catholic Church is trying to cram down our throats the Biblical concept that gender is binary (men and women). In fact, science clearly shows that human gender falls on a spectrum. It is not clear to me why the scientific evidence is so threatening to conservative Christians. As a scientist and a Christian, I certainly have no problems with the contradictions between the Bible and current scientific evidence. I have no problem with this simply because when scientists uncover new truths about the universe and living beings, they are discovering the wonderful creation of God. God created “man,” including the gender spectrum. Get over it!

— James W. Craft, Broomfield

What does data say about hate crimes?

Re: “Lawmakers want to add gender identity protections,” March 29 news story

In arguing for a new law that would add gender identity and expression to Colorado’s bias-motivated crimes statute, sponsor Sen. Rhonda Fields of Aurora said “The No. 1 reason for hate crimes is based on gender identity and expression. These folks are attacked and bullied more than any other demographic, and it’s not in our statute as it relates to having special protection. So it’s just that simple.”

Is it? It took 10 seconds to find DOJ hate crime statistics on the Internet. Gender identity makes up 4% (469 of 11,288 reported hate crimes in 2022). Race/ancestry was the basis for 59.1% of such crimes, while religion and sexual orientation accounted for a little over 17% each.

— Steve McKenna, Greenwood Village

Clean air, climate change shouldn’t be partisan

Re: “Democrats conducting all-out assault on the oil-gas industry,” April 4 commentary

Bob Beauprez misses the point about methane leaks from hydraulic fracking dirtying the air in Colorado. The issue should be bipartisan. Most Americans agree that pollution that hurts their lungs and their children’s lungs should be stopped when possible. Also, most Americans can see with their own eyes that the climate is getting worse, just like the scientists predicted decades ago.

Yes, we will need oil and methane gas during our transition away from them. Such a transition could be so much more advantageous to us all if the wealthy oil and methane interests didn’t pour so much money into manipulating people into thinking that the issues of pollution and climate were partisan. But we could do so much better together.

Because big oil and big methane have resisted using their resources to help with the transition over these past decades, we have to move faster now. We could have done this without government regulation if the people who collected all that money paid by us at the pump had used a fraction of it for R&D years ago.

We could have made the transition without the legislature creating rules. The economic benefits of electrifying everything will give the next generation beautiful, clean air and snowy mountains. A future for which we can all be proud.

No, Beauprez, this should not be a partisan affair.

The climate change we see with our own eyes, the burning lungs we feel on an otherwise beautiful summer’s day, should be matters that all Americans can gather around and fix together.

— Jeff Neuman-Lee, Denver