Letter to the editor

Most were Unitarians, believing in an undefined God with a mildly benevolent sense of Providence. It helps to read and remember history before making claims based on current desire. The current acceptance of magical thinking makes it difficult to maintain what used to be regarded as a conventional standard.
With that in mind, we can only do, and hope, for the best.

The Founders were profoundly aware of the tremendous cost and overwhelming waste and evil involved in using government to enforce anyone's particular religious views.

They had the history of the English Civil Wars and knew very well that one side's victory easily turned into that same side's bitter defeat—with no gain to anyone, least of all to God. Remember, too, that many of the colonists came from families that had been on the losing side at least once or twice over the previous hundred years.

Picture how the stereotypical Texan would feel if their local schools and tax-supported churches had been enforcing and requiring Muslim prayers in the classroom and on the football field—not only offended by the disregard for their personal beliefs, but further, ground under the heel of one's government in the process. This process produces generations of hatred and cycles of revenge.
When people feel justified by their faith, they will do inhumane and unconscionable things that generate bitter and permanent resentments—such as torture, unjust imprisonment, permanent detention, and bombing cities full of civilians. (Sound familiar? Hard to believe Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have American Flags flying over them, isn't it?)

This is why our Constitution was written the way it was. Deliberately preventing the misuse of government by any faction wanting to use government to enforce its religious views on everyone else produces greater efficiency in social and civil relations. Everyone goes along with everyone else, and everyone gets along on their way to their individual goals. Works pretty well when the basic rules are respected.

The current wave of homophobia, while agitated by irresponsible politicians, does have a basis in the community. Some in the traditional heterosexual community fear that marriage has been weakened. Sure it's been weakened—by heterosexuals deciding that it is optional. Gays who support marriage and commitment are trying to find their way toward stability. They are not going to get "healed" into being straight. Sorry, doesn't happen, no matter how many evangelicals wish it were otherwise. God made most of us "straight," some of us "gay," and others either indifferent or different. This is a matter of individual privacy, and it's nobody's business but theirs what they do with their plumbing—same as with straight people. That's why they are called
one's "privates."

Marriage, if it is weaker now than it used to be, is weaker because it is optional for the people in the relationship. People live together without marriage, they get divorced, they have kids—all without necessarily being married. And these are the straight people we're talking about here.

What sense does it make to rant and rave about the 5 or 10 percent who are gay, when the problem is with the other 95 or 90 percent who are straight? Fearing gay marriage is like vacuuming the bedroom carpet when the foundation of the house needs sandbagging against a flood.

What we really need is a decent national parental leave policy that will allow parents to stay home and bond with their kids during early childhood development. The real problem is not private sexuality. The real problem is all these kids being raised by appliances while their parents are out scrambling for jobs, money, and gas to run back and forth on their incredibly stressful treadmills. The kids grow up without character and values, and even less education. Frequently tested and measured, indeed. But poorly educated, and left way behind all those kids in other countries who are NOT wasting their time learning Creationist "Intelligent Design" pablum.

Who do you think is going to invent the next wave of communication technology? Someone filled with the self-righteousness of evangelical faith, or one of those bright kids in India or Finland, where they are training to compete in the 21st century?

And thanks to all the propaganda on Fox News and the Great Right-Wing Noise Machine, their parents, who watch an average of four hours a day of television, have become truly incapable of making informed decisions based on actual facts.
We get the government we deserve. Not necessarily the one we need, but thank God the 9/11 bunch was just a small group of amateurs. Now that we've trained and motivated millions of Muslims, we'll be discovering the real cost of kissing up to, and blindly following that rich dry drunk from Texas who truly is the Antichrist, a man without vision, compassion, or common sense, who thinks his "gut" is God telling him what to do, and that "the turn of the century" meant a return to the 19th century.

Yee-Hah! sure sounds a lot like Jihad!, doesn't it? Let's all pray for the future of our country and a return to secular, intelligent, and reality-based government. These people with young Mr. Bush remind me too much of the people with brown shirts, big leather belts, and special crosses who thought they had all the answers back in the 1930s and early 40s. We called them Nazis then. They call themselves "neo-conservative Republicans" now.

David K. Porter