Letters To The Editor

BLAME-FIXING

Admit mistake and apologize

Shame on you, Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend. Your medical knowledge led you to conclude Rachel Carver had been repeatedly sexually abused. It’s assumed this atrocity was committed by a male or males.

As a physician, you should know an adult sexually abusing a child is called pedophilia. As a doctor, you should know a male sexually abusing a female is heterosexual behavior, not homosexual behavior. As a learned man, you should know sexual abuse is more about power than about sexuality.

As a politician, you should know false, inflammatory rhetoric is damaging to the community and to individuals.

As a professed Christian, you should know the consequences of making false statements.

It’s time for you to draw upon your knowledge, experience and values and counter the damage you’ve done. I strongly encourage you to correct the misinformation and issue an apology to all intelligent people in Spokane County, and specifically to the homosexual community, for falsely stating Rachel Carver’s death was the result of homosexuality. Dean Lynch Spokane

Remarks trigger disgust

Once again, the coroner has made the news in a negative fashion.

I listened to and read his pointed comments with much disgust. I was somewhat surprised a supposedly well-educated and professional person who holds an elected position would make such pointed, judgmental comments regarding the gay community.

Apparently, Dr. Amend hasn’t kept up on his statistics, or Rev. Wood wouldn’t have had to bring to his attention that only 2 percent of child sex abuse involves homosexuals, and in almost all cases the abuser is heterosexual and has some ties with the family.

Regarding his unsubstantiated and misinformed comment, “All they think about is sex and lust all the time,” I agree with Ann Wood and her comment, “He is nauseating.”

I’m somewhat puzzled as to why Dr. Amend chose to bring to the public’s attention at this point the suspected trauma this poor child may have endured during her short lifetime. It seems to me his obligation was to report to the public the cause of death, which he did. One would think anything else found during the postmortem wouldn’t be made public knowledge until it had been investigated.

Is there some type of breach of confidentiality here? John Sicilia Spokane

Amend’s is among ‘courageous voices’

It’s probably necessary when courageous people speak out against child abuse that the shrill, defensive voices of protest are heard across the land, reminding us satan is still alive and well on planet Earth.

I am referring to people like Dr. Dexter Amend. What’s the difference whether you call it sodomy or an act of pedophilia? And to Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., speaking out against the murder of full-term babies. What difference does it make whether it’s called legal abortion or murder?

Whether we’re participants, defenders or merely apathetic witnesses of these atrocities, it won’t make any difference when our Lord returns. There won’t be anything the American Civil Liberties Union, Supreme Court, Human Rights Commission, etc., will be able to do.

He wrote the rule book. He will be the Supreme Court. He’s still the same as He was in the beginning. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than picturing myself standing in front of Him some day and hearing Him say, with sorrow in His voice, “I never knew you.” Zola Ballenger Spokane

Voters, look what you’ve done

Re: remarks made by Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend when he was releasing autopsy results on Rachel Carver:

It seems to me a ranking member of our community, supposedly educated, occupying an elected - elected - position of trust and importance, who publicly stands and expresses such blatantly bigoted and uneducated statements should serve as a message of enlightenment and chastisement to our voting population.

Maybe we shouldn’t be uncomfortable with these kinds of statements or with having people who represent us making them. After all, who put them in office by not being responsible enough to overcome the laziness of failing to vote? I’m just as guilty, but it’s time to become more responsible and make a conscious effort to vote, to understand who we are electing and what they stand for.

I can’t believe anyone would give credence to remarks that reflect such prejudice and ignorance. Will we never advance our thinking, beliefs and talents to the promotion of the better future from which we would all surely benefit? What will it take to wake us up? Bruno M. Evans Spokane

‘Admire his professional courage’

Maybe the coroner, Dexter Amend, is speaking his mind and his heart and not being just politically correct in these sick ‘90s.

I admire his professional courage for speaking up against the aberration of homosexuality and its possible relations to the God forsaken continual abuse, sodomy and, finally, murder of an innocent little child like Rachel Carver.

Child abuse, pedophilia and homosexuality are all perverted. Homosexuality brought us all on this planet the horror of AIDS. Sex is meant for loving intimacy between men and women and the procreation of the species. Now, sex can kill you. Eric Lafko Spokane

We don’t need ignorant coroner

Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend’s ignorance is utterly appalling. Doesn’t he know that since the beginning of time - we are talking millennia here - women and children have been sodomized by heterosexual men, with or without consent? When it’s without consent, its called rape. When it’s with consent, it called anal sex.

Homosexuals, Mr. Amend, aren’t the only people who engage in this practice.

For heaven’s sake, if he’s this ignorant about the sexual practices of all humans, gay, lesbian or heterosexual, I hate to think how ignorant he may be in other areas.

It’s truly outrageous and beyond belief that he could make such a statement. I only hope his homophobic response will result in immediate recall. We need an intelligent and well-informed county coroner. Dr. Amend definitely doesn’t fit the bill. C. Rendall Spokane

Educated? Try out of it

It’s reassuring to learn the awarding of advanced degrees to unqualified people didn’t begin in the 1960s, as is often asserted. Dr. Dexter Amend, our county coroner, exemplifies this situation perfectly, and he’s too old to have graduated in the 1960s.

A person with a minimal education in the sciences knows publicly stated opinions should have some basis in empirical evidence. An educated person doesn’t use words without knowing their dictionary meanings.

Since Dr. Amend is apparently unaware of the many studies (i.e. empirical evidence) disassociating homosexuals from child molesters and since he’s totally unqualified for his advanced degree, his ignorant statement calls into question his competency to perform the duties of his job. I assume they require some sort of education.

Dr. Amend is precisely the sort of “scientist” Cal Thomas would like to get input from in the decision making processes of the American Psychological Association regarding that body’s recommendation to stop treating homosexuality as an illness that ought to be treated until “cured.”

The studies Cal Thomas quotes are more than 20 years old - and with the passage of time, the successful “cures” they claim to have documented have dwindled alarmingly. Those studies are used as the basis of numerous fundamentalist Christian therapists and reeducation camps to attempt to “cure” gay people who have been unwise enough to be honest about their nature to unsympathetic parents or ministers.

Amend and Thomas would both do well to investigate the many studies that show homosexuals are as happy, well-adjusted and productive as heterosexuals. Stop trying to demonize them as the primary sources of evil on this planet. Greg Presley Spokane

Ignorance bespeaks incompetence

Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend’s comments about Rachel Carver having been abused by homosexuals for years and his further definition of sodomy as a homosexual act show total ignorance, which is unacceptable in a public servant.

Dictionaries, without exception, define “homosexuality” as sexual conduct between two members of the same sex. Sodomy, whether it be anal or oral sex, is not necessarily between two people of the same sex. The coroner should shut up and resign if he’s so ignorant he doesn’t know the difference between the two. He is incompetent and we shouldn’t have ever elected him. We should do whatever it takes to get rid of him.

I’m not a human rights activist. I don’t believe in many of the things they promote and I’m definitely not a gay rights activist. I don’t believe in that, either. Don Jones Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

One hand clapping would say it all

I’m responding to two recent articles in The Spokesman-Review. Article one, Rep. George Nethercutt returns to Spokane and will be speaking to combined Chamber of Commerce groups. The second article is “From bullets to books” on Aug. 10.

My wife and I attended a paid breakfast debate put on by the Spokane Chamber of Commerce between former speaker Tom Foley and Nethercutt before last fall’s election. Nethercutt made the statement, “The federal government should just get the heck out of education,” to which he received lavish applause.

I didn’t applaud as my hands accepted GI Bill checks for college expenses in the mid-1950s. I wondered at the time how many applauding hands had done the same.

“From bullets to books” is an excellent story on the massive benefits to ordinary Americans, and America, that government intervention helped provide. Consider: 450,000 engineers; 250,000 accountants; 238,000 teachers; 91,000 scientists; 89,000 doctors and dentists; and 17,000 writers and editors. The number of lawyers wasn’t mentioned.

It would be interesting if at the next chamber meeting, Mr. Nethercutt would make the same statement, but this time if all those who had accepted or whose parents had accepted government help in higher education were to withhold their applause.

I wonder if we could hear the stillness. Ted Shepherd Spokane

Growers push for profit over fairness

Both headline and news story (“Big growers push for guest workers,” July 13) contained the phrase “guest worker,” implying if Congress authorizes importation of foreign farm workers, they would enjoy cordial hospitality. Actual conditions under which farm workers labor may be less then cordial. Wages are low, working conditions arduous, housing mostly substandard and medical care not immediately available in a dangerous occupation. Only in recent years have drinking water and sanitary facilities been available in the fields.

One farmer says no labor shortage exists but is concerned for the future if “illegals” can’t be hired. However, state reports continue to show high unemployment figures for most rural counties. Why the concern over a nonexistent problem?

Why? Labor, as viewed by employers, is a commodity, the cost of which is to be strictly controlled. An abundance of labor in the form of “guest workers” increases supply, decreases demand and depresses wages. Lower wages mean reduced costs, thus increased profits.

The presence of “guest workers” also impedes union organizing efforts. A law authorizing “guest workers” effectively undermines farm workers’ ability to improve their wages, working conditions and living standard through collective bargaining.

Since July 5, 1935, domestic farm workers have been legally excluded from protections afforded all other U.S. workers. Congress should rectify the fundamental unfairness of the situation, not exacerbate it. Al Mangan Spokane