Your Published Letters

From the April 26, 2006, edition of The Other Paper (Columbus):

Strip-club vote exposed the Senate's cowardice

In voting for the severe restrictions that Senate Bill 16 places on adult businesses, while at the same time saying the bill is wrong and unnecessary, state senators displayed extreme political cowardice and heartlessness ("Bullied state law-makers approve a bill they hate," April 19).

Besides inflicting further damage on Ohio's weak economy and driving more people out of the state, the bill will increase demand for adult entertainment at sources such as the Internet, neighboring states and the underground economy.

We went down a similar path in the 1980s. The Reagan administration's war on pornography enforced some of the toughest restrictions on sexually explicit materials in the Western industrialized world. The result was that consumption of those materials increased drastically, and the U.S. became by far the world's leading producer of pornography.

In contrast, after Denmark repealed its obscenity laws in 1969, demand for pornography eventually underwent a long and steady decline in that country. A few years after the decline began, a survey of Copenhagen residents found that most Danes came to regard pornography as "uninteresting" or "repulsive."

These contrasting American and Danish experiences provide a lesson that fundamentalist supporters of SB 16 should have learned from their own Bibles: Forbidden fruit appears sweetest and becomes inordinately fascinating.

The forbidden-fruit allure might be a reason why Phil Burress, the founder and leader of the group that is pushing SB 16, is a self-professed recovering porn addict.

We would all be better off by referring Burress to a good psychiatrist or sex therapist about his problem rather than letting him impose his latest nutty and harmful idea on the entire state.

Joseph C. Sommer

From the April 7, 2006, edition of the Charleston (South Carolina) Post and Courier:

Lessons of history

A March 25 Post and Courier editorial properly expressed outrage, as have most media in this country, at the threatened death sentence for Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan. His "crime" was converting from Islam to Christianity.

Your editorial quoted U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint regarding the negative consequences for Afghanistan if persecution of Christians persisted. The following day, an Afghan court dismissed the case, paving the way for Rahman's release.

My question for Sen. DeMint and others is: How engaged would you be if minorities other than Christians were persecuted for their religious views?

Compare this with the case of the Pakistani medical doctor, Younis Shaikh. He had been a member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, took part in the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy and started a humanist organization called "The Enlightenment."

In October 2000, he was sentenced to death for the "crime" of blasphemy because he allegedly said that the prophet Muhammad was a non-Muslim before the age of 40 and the prophet's parents were non-Muslim because they died before Islam existed.

Despite efforts by humanist groups to publicize this disgraceful sentence, most mainstream media and the U.S. government all but ignored Dr. Shaikh's plight. After suffering in jail for more than three years, Dr. Shaikh was finally freed primarily through the efforts of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Amnesty International and a few other human rights organizations.

The Islamic world appears slow to learn the lessons of history - that religious beliefs should never be used to justify injustice and cruelty. When people become too religious to care whether they hurt others, it is time to stop respecting their beliefs and work to protect the progress in human rights we have achieved.

Though most countries have a dominant religion, it is easier to live in harmony and peace when governments do not favor one religion over another or religion over non-religion. We must work for freedom of conscience for all people. Toward this end, building and helping to maintain secular institutions may be more important in the long term than any military intervention the U.S. may launch.

Herb Silverman
Charleston, South Carolina

From the March 27, 2006, edition of the Anniston (Alabama) Star:

Re: Why I am an atheist (sort of) (Speaker's stand, March 12)

Jay Lloyd states that because atheists believe the universe will someday come to an end, there is no ultimate purpose to anything in your life.

Are we really to believe that God created this enormous universe billions of years ago to provide a coliseum where he can watch humans wrestle with the forces of good and evil? To believe that there is an ultimate purpose for our being and that we are the purpose for the universe's existence is laughable.

This does not imply that our lives can't have meaning, but rather that the onus is upon us to provide meaning based on our needs and interests. This is done in many ways. For many, purpose is derived from the desire to help humanity without concern for future reward. For some, meaning and purpose are derived from striving to understand the mysteries of the universe to know rather than to believe. For most, providing for a family gives life meaning and purpose.

The day will come when the sun becomes a supernova and consumes planet Earth. Does an event billions of years from now adversely affect my life and its purpose? Of course not.

David N. Miles
Orange Beach, Alabama

From the March 27, 2006, edition of the Tuscaloosa (Alabama) News:

Bible does not condemn abortion

Dear Editor: The Bible is frequently quoted because it can often be used to support either side of a debate. But I was surprised when "pro-life" advocate Ed Lopacki ("Unborn, science, all from God", March 21) used a biblical reference that actually supports my pro-choice stance.

Referring to Exodus 21:22 Lopacki states, "Punishment is exclusively on behalf of the injured child." But in fact, punishment is exclusively on behalf of the husband. In this case, a miscarriage has been induced through violence. This is not considered a violation of God's law unless the wife is injured. The concern is for the husband's property loss, and he may demand compensation. If the wife is hurt, then "an eye for an eye" justice goes into effect. Neither fetus nor wife have any worth other than the monetary value to the husband; but injury to the wife is considered more serious than the loss of the fetus.

Although Lopacki believes abortion is offensive to God, the prophet Hosea was comfortable asking God to induce abortions in the wives of his enemies. "Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb [an abortion] and dry breasts." Hosea 9:14. And from Hosea 9:16 we find, " ... yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb."

Notably absent from the Bible's list of those to be punished are the practitioners of abortion. And while today Christ's most fervent followers crusade against abortion, Christ never mentioned the practice.

David N. Miles
Orange Beach, Alabama

From the March 23, 2006, edition of the Keene (New Hampshire) Sentinel:

Religion, state should be separate

Eric Moskowitz's March 10 piece on the defeat of vouchers in the House notes that voucher proponents said their plan was constitutional because the public funds could only be spent "on the nonreligious portion of education at religious schools".

That is an illusion. In theory and practice the whole curriculum in faith-based schools is permeated with a particular religious point of view.

The New Hampshire constitution clearly provides that "no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools or institutions of any religious sect or denomination".

Edd Doerr
President
Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring, Maryland

From the March 6, 2006, edition of the Washington Times:

Thomas Sowell's "Something for nothing" column (Mar 3) attacked teacher unions for opposing school vouchers in order to protect their jobs. But without their democratic unions teachers would be little better off than street sweepers (not that there is anything wrong with street sweepers). Few people would go to the trouble and expense of becoming teachers if they didn't have some job protection from the sometimes arbitrary decisions of cheapskate school boards.

Private, mostly faith-based, school teachers earn less than public school teachers, rarely have job protection, enjoy selected student bodies, and are generally selected on the basis of their religion.

It should be added that University of Illinois researchers Christopher and Sarah Lubienski reported this year that a large statistical analysis of school math scores shows that on average public school students score higher than private or charter school students. Another study released this year shows that student performance is directly related to family income and level of parents' education.

Finally, 25 statewide referenda from coast to coast over the last 40 years, plus numerous opinion polls, show that the American public is strongly opposed to school vouchers.

Edd Doerr
President
Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring, Maryland

From the March 2, 2006, edition of the Post-Cresent (Wisconsin):

Letters: History is not as bleak as writer characterized

Jerry McAnulty's Feb. 20 screed deserves a rational response. He tosses out unsupported generalizations as though he were Yahweh thundering out his pronouncements from Mount Sinai that we poor mortals are to accept as revealed truth.

One wonders if he's a high school or college student who has just read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and nothing else on the subject. Zinn has a perspective that deserves to be heard in the neverending debate and discussion about history, but his is not the only voice that deserves to be heard.

While it is true that American Indians have suffered injustice in their encounters with European civilization, and African-Americans experienced slavery and racial discrimination for many centuries, that is not simply the whole story.

McAnulty seems to have forgotten the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died fighting the southern slaveholding aristocracy during the Civil War, resulting in the emancipation of those slaves, and how American constitutional values were the basis for the civil rights achievements of the 1950s and 1960s.

Apparently, McAnulty is unaware that capitalism had been around for a few centuries by the time the American republic was created. The founding fathers did not "invent" capitalism. Their government was a democratic adaptation to capitalism.

If McAnulty has ever read the "Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, he would have appreciated the unwitting tribute that Marx and Engels paid to capitalism with the following words:

"Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry ..."

Marx and Engels give the credit to businessmen - the "bourgeois" class.

One hopes that Jerry McAnulty is young enough to be educable.

Robert Nordlander
Menasha, Wisconsin