Good early AM, folks!
Here they are, Sunday's LTE's. Nighty nite.
Harder to change
The Aug. 28 letter "Taking away rights" said that a proposed marriage amendment to the state constitution "will constitutionalize what is already law." In that case, why do it?
Conservatives love to claim that they support small government that allows
people to lead it, not the other way around. A redundant amendment that also
restricts the flexibility of future citizens could not be less compatible with
conservatism.
SARA E. BUTNER
Winston-Salem
Pass their power down
Americans overwhelmingly still believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
A misconception about this amendment is that legislators are voting on the
definition of marriage. They are not. They are voting to pass their power down
to the people and let us vote on the definition of marriage.
This important question should be decided by the people and not by a few politicians or judges.
With hope, the Journal will join in urging our state legislators and senators to pass this bill.
EDWIN MANCE
Winston-Salem
Progress and advancement
JACK LUTZ
King
Sum It Up
But he's confused. That's not an argument against same-sex marriage;
it's an argument for it. All loving people should be able to
participate in that arrangement, even gay people.
Here they are, Sunday's LTE's. Nighty nite.
Harder to change
The Aug. 28 letter "Taking away rights" said that a proposed marriage amendment to the state constitution "will constitutionalize what is already law." In that case, why do it?
What will an amendment accomplish that a law
banning same-sex marriage doesn't already? Only one thing: Several years
from now, if a majority of voters in North
Carolina decide that they do want to permit same-sex marriage, it
will be harder for them to change a constitutional amendment than a law. In
other words, Republicans in the legislature want to take away the right of
future North Carolinians to make their own decisions.
SARA E. BUTNER
Winston-Salem
Pass their power down
Americans overwhelmingly still believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
A bill allowing North
Carolina citizens to vote on an N.C.
state constitutional amendment defining marriage is coming up soon in the state
legislature. Even though a similar bill had been introduced the previous
eight years, the controlling leadership never once allowed it to come up for a
vote in the state House or Senate.
This important question should be decided by the people and not by a few politicians or judges.
With hope, the Journal will join in urging our state legislators and senators to pass this bill.
EDWIN MANCE
Winston-Salem
Progress and advancement
Most of the progress and advancement made in our
history has come about under Democratic administrations. Any lack of progress
has come under Republican administrations or a Congress
controlled by Republicans.
In 1919, the Republican Congress
vowed that the United
States would not join the League
of Nations. The goal was to deny Woodrow
Wilson any more victories. The U.S.
did not join the League
of Nations, and this proved to be a terrible mistake. Seeds were sown, and
the world reaped a bitter harvest some 20 years hence with the rise of Hitler
and the Nazis.
During the 1930s, in the throes of the Great
Depression, the Republicans in Congress
attempted to thwart everything Franklin
D. Roosevelt proposed under the New Deal. Left to the Republicans, there
would have been no CCC, WPA or TVA.
History supports that there have only been two
good Republican presidents: Abraham
Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt. The rest proved to be ineffective — especially the last one, George
W. Bush. The same Bush
who led the nation into two wars — wars we cannot win or get out of — who
increased the debt ceiling seven times in eight years, who never vetoed a
spending bill — yet refused to raise taxes.
The present crop of Republicans has embraced the
mantra of George
H.W. Bush: "Read our lips! No new taxes and no reform of the tax system!"
Our debt crisis will not be solved without raising taxes. But try telling that
to a Republican.
JACK LUTZ
King
Sum It Up
Do you feel safer now than in the days right
after Sept. 11, 2001? Respond to letters@wsjournal.com and put "Sum It
Up" in the subject header. Only signed entries please, no anonymous ones.
Briefer responses receive preference in print.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Correspondent of the Week
Confused
In his Aug. 30 guest column against same-sex
marriage (because that's really what it is) ("The people's decision"), Rep.
Dale Folwell writes, "Marriage is the foundation of our society. It is the
most personal relationship and provides the support structure for life and death
decisions, family relationships, tax policy, and a stable and growing
economy."
JANE GIBSON
Winston-Salem
LTE #2.... I'm overwhelmed
ReplyDeleteMay 20, 2011.
PRINCETON, NJ -- For the first time in Gallup's tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans' views did not change.
April 20, 2011,
A poll from CNN this week is the latest to show a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, with 51 percent saying that marriages between gay and lesbian couples “should be recognized by the law as valid” and 47 percent opposed.
Jack Lutz....golly gee whiz. Do you play Led Zeppelin backwards and listen to the Devil's words too?
ReplyDeleteLTE #1&2 - This has long since become tiresome.
ReplyDeleteIn colonial times, the law, as laid down by the royal governor in NC, said that any couple wanting to get married had to have the ceremony conducted by an Anglican minister.
The folks who lived in the backwoods, lucky to have access to any kind of minister, ignored the law and did what they had to do.
For the most part, it was illegal for slaves to marry under any circumstance. They too ignored the law and performed their own ceremonies.
After emancipation, many states had miscegenation laws that endured for over a century forbidding a man and a woman of different races to marry. Interracial couples simply went to other states to marry, but if they returned to their backward homes states they were subject to prosecution and, in some cases, lynching.
Today marriage is a civil affair, as it must be under the Constitution. Certain state requirements must be met to receive a license. Once the license is issued, it is up to the couple to decide how to finalize it. Many choose to do that under the auspices of their church. Many others choose to keep it civil (perhaps in more ways than one) and have the ceremony performed by a magistrate or clerk of court. Either way makes no difference…the marriage is valid.
Many religions require their members to marry before having children. But that is, as it must be under the Constitution, a private matter.
The only real reason to get married is to establish a long list of legal rights accruing to the couple. That list has become so long and so important that to deny any two people that right is simply unacceptable.
This amendment business is simply a matter of a bunch of meddling so-called christians trying to define a civil right from their extremely narrow point of view. They are on a power trip, and as such, they are no different than the racists who imposed the miscegenation laws.
Sum It Up - Surely this is a joke question.
ReplyDeleteOn 9-11-2001, the worst day of violence in American civilian history:
1. 4 commercial passenger aircraft were highjacked. At the moment of the highjacking, about 5,500 commercial passenger flights were in the air. That means that if you had been flying on a commercial passenger flight at that time, the chances that you would have been highjacked were about 0.000727, a number that is statistically irrelevant.
2. About 72 million Americans went to work. Fewer than 3,000, including airline passengers and people at work in the World Trade Center, were killed. The chances of being killed that day were about 0.000042, again, statistically irrelevant.
In the ten years since 9/11, our security policy has been driven by emotion rather than reason. We have spent trillions of dollars on two wars and unbelievably invasive airport security measures. If any of that has "made you safer", the percentage of "safer" would also be statistically irrelevant.
As sure as the sun rises every day, there will be another "major" terrorist attack. But it will not involve aircraft. It will come from an entirely different and unexpected direction. If you "feel" safer, you are simply deluded.
Many people have long endorsed gay and lesbians' right to marry under civil law. However, the problem arises when gay and lesbians want to ram their aberrant lifestyle and sexual practices down the throats of the average person of America and call it marriage. It is not, and will not be marriage in the traditional sense of the word, even if governments change the law.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, unless there is a federal law passed which allows for gay marriage, it is unlikely that there will be a state law in N.C. for a while. That depends primarily on the influx of people from other parts of the country who have a more radical and perverse view of life.
What is pushing the polls toward acceptance is political correctness. Most people don't want to be viewed as a bigot in any sense of the word, so they are switching from their true beliefs to one that is more socially correct. However, if you were to ask most if marriage should be between a man and woman without any attached societal stigma, almost all would say yes.
Afterall, 'most' everybody knows what the badend of a human body should be used for..........
Good PM, folks!
ReplyDeleteThe LTE's concern gay marriage, which I support. Another LTE is a TB rant. As for Sum It Up, I feel no more or less safe now. OT is right: there will be another strike, sans airplanes.
Bucky: I am advised that married men sometimes make use of their wives' bad ends in that fashion of which you disapprove. What is your opinion of that? Please be careful in your wording, no depictions of activities, please.
Lord, Stab, don't encourage him. My parents knew what to do with my bad end, at least after my frequent bouts of bad judgment. They used a yardstick, which usually meant eating dinner standing up.
ReplyDeleteAs to the amendment business, a news release from Friday:
9/2/2011 - Fifty-six percent (56%) of North Carolina voters oppose or strongly oppose an amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage, a five-point jump in the last two years, according to a February 2011 Elon University Poll, a non-partisan polling service.
The poll also showed a strong majority (57%) of North Carolinians support marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples, revealing a dramatic 9% increase in public support for marriage equality in only two years. This result mirrors two separate polls conducted by Public Policy Polling in March and July that also reveal majority support of legal recognitions for same-sex couples.
Full article here:
http://www.equalitync.org/news1/poll-shows-a-majority-of-north-carolinians-oppose-amendment-banning-same-sex-marriage
If those polls are accurate, I wonder why liberal Democrats are fighting so hard to keep a vote from happening on the issue.
ReplyDeleteStab, I don't know what's up with you. It sounds to me like you've been up a badend or two during your lifetime. Or worse, somebody's been up yours. I think badends should be used for their designed purpose, and left alone otherwise.
And to our very own clairvoyant Kitty Kat, it's obvious that you know very little about airport security if you think the next terrorist attack will NOT come from the air.
Mike...a word of advice. Trolls like Linds thrive on the attention they get from statements like that. Such cretins are best ignored.
ReplyDeleteArthur, in case you didn't know, Mike invited me to participate in this forum.
ReplyDeleteHey, Arthur!
ReplyDeleteYes, you are right. I set myself up for Linds' comment. He, too, is right, as I did indeed welcome here, as is my custom with visitors, and will abide a bit of trollery in the name of free exchange of comments. To a point.
As to Bucky's concerns re me and bad ends, I am without experience there, except for the usual invasive routine medical checkups. Bucky didn't answer my question, but I rescind it.
Boy, I think this Defense of Marriage Act proposed in North Carolina may get interesting. It seems that if 2/3 of both houses of the General Assembly approve the N.C. Constitutional amendment, it will go on the ballot in November of 2012.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, I wouldn't give it a chance of passing, but with Obama screwing the pooch on everything from the economy to health care. The voters are going to be none to happy in 2012, and may vote for it. Remember, polls don't vote, people do.
Let's hope that at least 1/3 of the members of one House are not trogolodytes.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see. It comes up for a vote in the General Assembly week after next. I'll bet Raleigh will be a hot bed of gay and lesbian activity then.
ReplyDeleteIs anybody in here planning to go? I don't think I can make it.
"December 02, 2008
ReplyDeleteTerrorists are likely to use a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world in the next five years, a blue-ribbon panel assembled by Congress has concluded.
They are more likely to use a biological weapon than a nuclear one -- and the results could be devastating, the chairman of the commission told CNN.
'The consequences of a biological attack are almost beyond comprehension. It would be 9/11 times 10 or a hundred in terms of the number of people who would be killed,' former Sen. Bob Graham said."
See the whole article here:
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-02/us/terror.report_1_nuclear-weapons-biological-weapons-threat-of-nuclear-terrorism?_s=PM:US
For a compendium of Congressional reports on terrorism, go here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/index.html
-----------------------
According to a decade of intelligence gathering by Debkafile, the next major terrorist attack on the United States will probably consist of one of three avenues:
Biological, nuclear or, perhaps worst of all, an attempt to bring down the internet. While the Department of Homeland Security (why do I laugh every time I hear that name?) focuses most of its attention on airplanes and conventional bombs, little has been done to defend against the other methods of attack.
And if you want to think really low tech, remember the chaos created a few years ago by one angry man in the sniping incidents in the DC area. Shopping centers in W-S and elsewhere were forced to provide extra outside security because sissy shoppers were wetting their pants out of fear that the sniper was after them.
What if someone sent out 60 or 70 highly trained teams of snipers to blanket the nation? People would be cowering in their basements and the economy would grind to a halt.
That's real nice Kitty Kat....I guess you didn't hear about the alert that was put out regarding small aircraft just a day or so ago. Jeez...It just never stops.
ReplyDeleteOne year in grad school I worked with a research team that was studying IQ testing in hopes of either replacing or improving the commonly used Stanford-Binet scale.
ReplyDeleteOne day while we were taking a break, a female colleague asked, quite seriously, if it could be possible to have a NEGATIVE IQ.
That question has now been answered.