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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Looking Back: Opinions from past add perspective

Looking Back reviews opinions published in The Spokesman-Review during this week in history.

Monday holiday, May 26, 1956: An editorial noted the pesky problem of holidays, such as Memorial Day, falling in the middle of the week. Why not move holidays to Fridays or Mondays?

“There is certainly no need to argue the attractiveness of the three-day weekend. The extra day may allow folks to take a trip or to undertake some special task that cannot squeeze into a two-day weekend. So why not ‘manufacture’ more long weekends and do away with these midweek holidays?”

It concluded that “the point is is not that all holidays be changed; it is that some could be shifted without damaging the sentiments which brought them into being.”

In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, to Mondays. It was implemented on the federal level in 1971. Eventually, all 50 states complied.

Gay rights, May 23, 1986: An editorial criticized Washington state Initiative 490, which would have prohibited “admitted” gay people from teaching in public schools or working in jails, juvenile centers, day care centers and government agencies where they would have “substantial public contact.”

“The initiative rests on the assumption that the mere fact of sexual orientation … determines whether someone is a menace. Let’s be reasonable,” the editorial implored.

AIDS was one fear underlying the initiative. Another, as the editorial pointed out, was the “usually unspoken belief that homosexuals will molest others. But, in fact, sexual orientation does not not determine whether someone is a molester.”

It concluded: “It is difficult for most of us to understand homosexuality, but that is not a reason to fear it – and it certainly is not reason to treat homosexuals in the same reprehensible way society, in years past, treated Jews, blacks and women.”

Secrecy, May 24, 2006: An editorial warned against the feds’ overreach with surveillance and secrecy, as part of the war on terror. It noted:

“On Sunday, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised the possibility of seeking criminal prosecutions against reporters and news organizations that print or broadcast national security information. That would mean the journalists who first told us about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, secret prisons in Europe, the detention of enemy combatants and the various NSA spying programs could be thrown in jail.

“This isn’t the first time the nation has been at war. During the Cold War, reporters divulged the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the U2 flight of Francis Gary Powers. During the Vietnam War, reporters divulged the secret bombings of Cambodia and printed the Pentagon Papers. No journalists went to jail while informing the public of these national security matters,” the editorial said.

It concluded: “Democracies provide special challenges to those who are charged with keeping us safe, but that is the necessary trade-off in preserving freedoms we hold dear. We can never declare victory in the current war if we have to fundamentally change who we are.”