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:
Northwest Ohio has a large Catholic population and at least two of the Toledo TV stations fall over each other promoting the Church and their events. Most of the time it seems like they act like PR agencies rather than news reporters. Both stations plan extensive coverage of Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia. Those plans made me wonder who was paying for it.
Next week the Pope is visiting the US with time spent at the World Meeting of Families Congress in Philadelphia and WTOL and WTVG are planning on having full news crews traveling with Toledo area families going to the event. WTOL also had a 2 part sit-down interview with the Archbishop of Toledo and it was so fluffy my teeth hurt from the sugar.
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:
White conservatives, led by FOX ‘news’, have tried to spin the Charleston shooting as an attack on Christians. It continues their effort to marginalize and trivialize African-Americans and their experiences. Of course the issue this time isn’t debatable. Don’t let white conservatives try and distract from the real reasons for the shooting.
The evidence for this being a terrorist attack on blacks comes from the mouth of the shooter himself: