Letters To The Editor

THE MEDIA

Give positive news more emphasis

I am an Eastern Washington Univeristy student who was involved with the New Century plan. I agree with the Perspective article by Sue Kaun (“Look for new ways to involve everyone to ensure a brighter future,” Jan. 12) that newspapers (and in particular, The Spokesman-Review) could include more articles and features on community organizations and people who are doing things in the community to help better and develop it.

How much more encouraging it would be to all of us to read on the front page of the Region section stories about what is being done to help develop our community, involving the organizations and people who are doing it, instead of always seeing crime. I am not saying that bank robberies, child molestation and other things don’t need to be reported, because as informed people we need to know about these things. It is just that people might look more positively at our community and feel more like part of it if they first see things Spokanites are doing to make it better.

As federal resources available to communities decline, with more fiscal demands being made on local communities, perhaps the more we think and feel like “we,” instead of like “us and them,” the better chance we will have of enjoying our families and quality of life with what we have already - our people. Doug Danly Spokane

Dirt passed off as patriotic substance

I hope the American people will see through the movie industry’s most recent attempt to legitimize convoluted and degrading behavior by glorifying hard-core pornographer Larry Flynt.

Flynt’s own daughter, Tonya, now 31, says he abused her when she was a child. She has been speaking out against the film, “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” She contends it covers up much of his sordid behavior toward her and others, and said, “This man is not a hero.”

The purpose of putting this film on a Hollywood pedestal appears to be an effort to prove that the First Amendment can only be protected by polluting the moral atmosphere with every form of verbal and visual filth and garbage, and raising it to a constitutional right.

But the framers of the Constitution would be appalled at this radical interpretation. They did not believe immorality had to be imposed in order to protect the Constitution. John Adams, our second president, said, “Our Constitution was written only for a moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Contrary to the film’s promoters’ assertions, it is not about preserving the First Amendment. It is about trying to make deviant, licentious lifestyles acceptable. That a movie like this would even be produced, let alone touted as patriotic and championing free speech protections, is a disgrace to Americans’ sensibilities. W.J. Lawson Spokane

RAISING CHILDREN

Rosemond column’s a keeper

It disturbed me to read a recent letter criticizing John Rosemond’s columns. They have been, almost without exception, my favorite part of the paper.

Dr. Rosemond not only points out, succinctly, the fallacies involved in present-day child rearing, but gives sound, detailed advice about coping with the problems. He does this with insistence on firmness and consistency, but never with a recommendation for abusive punishment. I find his sense of humor refreshing. I’ve seen his suggestions tried, and with appreciable success.

We are now into second and third generations of unhappy, frustrated, undisciplined children. Many of them finally learn discipline the hard way, out in the real world. Some never do, and often wind up in prison. Others just go through life perturbed and dissatisfied without a clue as to why, and raise their children the same way, having no better pattern to imitate. Rosemond provides a pattern.

Some of us, who grew up with these assured guidelines, long ago realized that only in homes where discipline is observed can love and affection abound. Try Rosemond’s way. You might like it. C.K. Young Spokane

Rosemond’s approach works

Please, oh please, do not cancel Dr. John Rosemond’s wonderful column. E.S. Bishop (Letters, Jan. 7) expressed very well the things I want to say.

“Ludicrous” is the word I would use about the statement, “many children rarely need to be corrected at all.” The same applies in response to the implication a family is a democracy.

I don’t have an M.D. after my name, but I have four wonderful adult children who were raised under principles similar to Rosemond’s. And I have 14 grandchildren whose parents are sensible enough to know that children do, indeed, need a lot of discipline and a lot of correction, as well as - horrors! - some punishment, lots of common sense and lots and lots of love.

Hurray for Rosemond. May his tribe increase! That is, the tribe of children raised with his down-to-earth, sensible, workable guidelines. Most of them will become the kind of decent and industrious adults one wants to be around. Ruth C. Heumier Otis Orchards

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Hostile Spokane has much to learn

Spokane School District 81’s decision to hire equity facilitators has come under criticism by many letter writers. Critics assert that the $202,000 is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

These people are under the belief that an equity problem doesn’t exist in our city. They have forgotten about or are unaware of the bias and prejudice that exists in our schools, both public and private, every day. The recent allegations of lower pay for women and larger fees for women’s dry cleaning in our state should be a gentle equity wake-up call. Their lapse in memory concerning the difficulties at Chase Middle School two years ago is also disturbing.

Mona Mendoza is obviously working very hard to teach our children and district staff to be accepting of all people in our society. The diversity extends past racial bias to gender, sexual preference, religion and socioeconomic opportunity.

Spokane is not a friendly city for those who fall outside of the white Caucasian, heterosexual, Christian profile. If it were, we would be more diverse. The absence of a large non-majority population should indicate the unfriendly nature of our community.

We continue to see an increase in hate crimes in Spokane. They occur because of a lack of tolerance for those who are different from the mainstream.

Wouldn’t it be better to spend $202,000 to teach our children the value of tolerance and equity than to spend valuable tax money to investigate, prosecute and incarcerate youths who commit crimes of hate? As the old saying goes, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance! Mike McGinnis Spokane

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Language choice just nonconformity

In regards to the Ebonics controversy:

The Oakland Board of Education assumes that its African American (I hate that term, too) students do not know standard English and need extensive teaching to learn it. I don’t believe it; after all, these kids have been watching TV all their lives and they are not stupid.

They speak that way because they are afflicted with a well-known teen disease - they just want to be different.

In fact, a lot of the ills of our present day are caused by this disease. You see the results all around us downtown in Spokane. You can spend all the money you want teaching these children, but until they have lived long enough to learn that without acquiescing to a certain degree of outward conformity, they aren’t going anyplace in our society but downhill.

A person can always be an individual in their own mind, and that’s where the strongest expression of individuality belongs. Dorothy E. Carter Spokane

Condemnation crashed on takeoff

I am responding to Jack Morton’s letter of Jan. 10, “Wages of homosexuality is death.”

Morton links homosexuality with disease, and therefore he calls it a perversion that deserves a homophobic response.

Morton, in all of your reading, did you come across any statistics regarding the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and lesbianism (which is also a form of homosexuality)? Had you done so, you would have read that lesbians have the lowest incidence of STDs of any category of sexually active people. This means lesbian sex is even “cleaner” than heterosexual sex.

By Morton’s logic, while male homosexuality would be labeled a perversion, female homosexuality would be labelled healthy.

So, rather than a homophobic response, by Morton’s logic, we should rather be taking a sexist, anti-male response: Women, avoid men at all costs. Become lesbians and live healthy lives!

Gee, thanks for the incredible “recruiting” technique, Morton. According to you, if people really cared about their daughters, they would raise them all to be lesbians.

Of course, if this logic seems faulty to you, perhaps you should raise your children to be loving, kind, and thoughtful. Teach them that AIDS is a heterosexual disease worldwide, and that if it hadn’t been for homophobia in this country, maybe more research dollars would have been funneled towards solving the AIDS epidemic early on, and we all wouldn’t have lost so many of our sons, brothers and friends. Micki Archuleta Pullman

Gaping hole in lame argument

Sexual orientation and its consequences may be the single most wildly misunderstood human trait in the minds of our general population. All too typical is Jack Morton’s conclusion in his Jan. 10 letter (“Wages of homosexuality is death”).

Morton selects two bits of statistical data, misapplies them while omitting all potentially contradictory information, then draws a totally unsupportable conclusion by blaming it all on sexual orientation. His most blatant omission is the well-established fact that the very lowest frequency of AIDS is not found in the young, old, single, married, druggies or clean, gay or heterosexual, but among lesbian women.

If he insists on attributing the problem to sexual orientation, honesty should have forced him to tell the whole story instead of resorting to unsupportable bigotry.

The fact that AIDS went unidentified for so many years is one reason why it became so widespread in the first place. Even now, pure ignorance is probably the single greatest cause for its spread, as suggested by the fact that its most rapid growth is among Central African heterosexuals, with promiscuous drug addicts by far the next largest group, regardless of whether they are straight or gay, married or single.

Meanwhile, the intellectually disadvantaged would-be moralists of our world keep the situation thoroughly muddied with their own distorted claims. That is the real perversion in our modern society. Paul L. Weis Spokane

Leftist subversives the real problem

Three things in this life are certain: death, taxes and Edward Keeley’s acrimonious attacks on gun-rights activists and Bill of Rights supporters (“Quisling arguments cut not ice,” Letters, Jan. 10).

Keeley completely missed the central theme of letters written by Leonard C. Johnson and Curtis Stone. Both writers warn that in our zeal to thwart terrorism we may be tempted to ignore basic rights and to indict the innocent, not terrorists.

To Keeley, anything short of a total ban on firearms is a domestic arms race.

There is, in fact, a ruthless, no-olds-barred war within America. It’s a war being waged by the pagan left against conservatives, gun owners, veterans, Christians, pro-life advocates, patriots, Republicans and other defenders of liberty. This war is overlooked due to hysteria over a handful of right-wing “terrorists.”

If we’re going to severely punish traitors, as Keeley suggests, then let’s start with the quislings of America’s radical left, who are a clear and present danger; individuals who want to disarm the people, set aside the Constitution and establish a totalitarian big-brother type government - the very type of government our nation’s founders fought to overthrow. Lu Haynes Kettle Falls, Wash.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Where was ‘good science’ when needed?

Two recent letters condemning consideration of mothballing the four lower Snake River dams beg for some correction.

The Washington Association of Wheat Growers conveniently avoids telling us that these four dams produce less than 10 percent of Bonneville Power Administration power. Farmers will still be able to irrigate if these dams are bypassed.

Demands that their version of “good science” be a prerequisite to making any changes were strangely lacking when these dams were first proposed.

The second letter, by E.A. Johnson, refers to those suggesting this bypass as a “lunatic fringe.” Yet Johnson fails to castigate those who promoted these fish boondoggles and the failed Washington Public Power Supply System bonds the lunatic fringe is now paying for.

Both letters are, unfortunately, terribly oversimplified and misleading.

The fact is, there was considerable warning that these dams would decimate the wild stocks of Snake River salmon and steelhead. Sadly, these dams should probably never have been built in the first place.

I totally agree that all users of this river system must be considered. Doesn’t that include the fish? What right does the Washington Wheat Growers Association or Johnson have to cram down other users’ throats the tragic extinction of these salmon and steelhead?

No, a grave mistake was made when these dams were put in place. Now, when the cold reality sets in that these fish probably will never survive in much less than a free-flowing river state, the fish are held against a self-serving double standard of “good science.” John E. Bentley Post Falls