KANSAS CITY, KS, October 16, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Republican candidate for the Kansas state senate has sounded a clear message: “One cannot support the Democratic platform and be a follower of Christ.”
Steve Fitzgerald, who is challenging Democratic State Senator Kelly Kultala for the right to represent Kansas City, said the party’s support for redefining marriage should cause faithful Catholics and other Christians to reform the party or leave its ranks.
Fitzgerald, an outspoken pro-life Republican, said, “Christ said marriage is between one man and one woman, and the Democratic platform said that it’s not true.”
The challenger made his original comments before 25 members of the local Polish American Club – and Kultala, a Roman Catholic, who called the remarks a “direct slam.”
“I was born and raised a Catholic,” Kultala said. “He does not have the right to dismiss my faith because it is not the same as his.”
But Fitzgerald said Kultala is “Catholic in the tradition of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden,” members of their local churches who promote abortion and same-sex “marriage.”
Although he said the idea that “one cannot be Catholic or Christian and a Democrat” was “not an unreasonable summation of what I actually said,” his “actual message was fix the party or leave.” Archbishop Charles Chaput issued a similar call over the weekend.
Kultala rebuffed the efforts to change the party’s stance on marriage, saying she “said that people cannot come into our house and disgrace our Democratic Party.”
Faithful Catholics have put both parties’ platforms under a microscope in 2012 as never before.
Bishop John Paprocki of Springfield recently concluded the Democratic Party’s planks promoting marriage redefinition and abortion “explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.” His Grace wrote that, while there are Republicans who “promote same-sex marriage, and they are equally as wrong as their Democratic counterparts,” their views “do not have the official support of their party.”
Fitzgerald hopes enough people are paying attention to his opponent’s views to make a difference.
“She is now being a typical politician, hiding her extreme views by distorting mine – on abortion, on gay marriage, on cloning,” Fitzgerald has said. “She’s hiding her views favoring abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research from the district’s voters and that’s just plain wrong.”