Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
A recent post mentioned a letter to the editor, I read in my local paper, about the US Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling made this past summer. The letter was so wrong and fact free it made me respond with a letter of my own. To my surprise (not really) the author of the original letter responded to me. Again his letter is free of any facts.
Letters to the Editor of a local newspaper was one of our first ‘comment sections’ where regular readers could share their various viewpoints tempered with moderation by the newspaper staff. Today, even with prescreening, the letter section sometimes resembles the fact free fantasizes we find in places like FOX ‘news’, news websites and Facebook. Some friends think the ignorant comments should be ignored but I think one should respond to ignorance in some cases like I did to a recent letter to the editor about the US Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling.
A gentleman had the following letter published in my local paper this past week:
After the historic US Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, affirming the right of LGBT people to marry and have their marriages recognized in all 50 states, political and religious conservatives whined and cried about the end of religion as we know it and claimed there would be massive lawsuits to force pastors and churches to perform same-sex marriages besides the usual ‘God will smite us all’ end times rhetoric. Relax conservatives, you can still hate same-sex marriage. You just can’t stop them from happening now.
One of my favorite sections of the decision:
During a recent discussion about ISIS on Bill O’Reilly’s FOX ‘news’ show, Rev. Franklin Graham was brought on for really no other reason than to give his religious bigotry perspective. He actually said the government had been infiltrated by Muslims when in reality bigoted Christians, like himself, have infiltrated the government and they are actively passing their form of Sharia law on the rest of us.
In his dissent in United States v. Windsor, Justice Antonin Scalia once again showed he lacks any judicial values beyond his selfish ends. His reasoning for dissenting basically came down to his view that the court lacked the power to invalidate a law democratically adopted. Yet he found no such concern in invalidating the Voting Rights Act yesterday. It is obvious that his personal view of the law determines if he thinks the court has the power to give a ruling. In my world that is known as being a hypocritical asshat.