Letters for Jan. 11, 2023

Comprehensive sex ed is the future

When your school had sex education, how did you feel? Empowered? Informed? Prepared to make good, healthy decisions? Ashamed? Embarrassed? According to World Population Review, 40% of students experience sex education that makes them feel the latter: abstinence only.

I’m one of the lucky students who didn’t feel that, due to the Community School in Spokane giving me a comprehensive sex education program. CSE is based in science, without prejudice, while covering a range of topics: human growth and development, relationships, personal skills, sexual health and society/culture.

I can confidently state CSE’s the way to go. Recently, Washington state created laws requiring CSE and alienating abstinence-only curriculum (RCS 28A.300.475). That wasn’t popular. My goal is to tell you it’s OP. CSE’s a massive reason myself and peers have made good decisions involving health and safety.

If CSE requirements are rolled back and students no longer have this education in their lives, we’ll be rolling back time. Students will again be educated with shame and fear. Young people will lose their ability to make good decisions, to understand the consequences of their actions. Teen pregnancy and STI rates will climb. We want what’s best for our children. If you are in agreement with this movement, I ask you to support the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act, an act designed to give our children worthy education. Give our children the education deserved.

Sadge Jaggar

Spokane

Cats at large

There are 85 million household cats in America alone and another 70 million feral cats born and raised on the streets, many to domestic parents. A quarter of these household cats are “outdoor cats,” allowed to run at large, and 15% of those cats are unsterilized. While laws are in place in Spokane County that discourage letting unsterile cats roam free, because seeing outdoor cats is so normalized, this law is hardly enforced and the feral population continues to grow unchecked.

Cats in America kill 20.7 billion animals every year and are responsible for 63 extinctions worldwide. They carry deadly zoonotic illnesses and are far more likely to contract and spread rabies than any other animal. I’m calling on the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service to amend Chapter 5 of the county code so that cats, like dogs, are no longer allowed to run at large whether they’re sterilized or not. But until this change is made, it’s the responsibility of local cat owners to step up to the plate.

If you or someone you know owns an outdoor cat, please consider keeping your pet indoors and investing in alternative sources of stimulation for the sake of all Spokane residents: furred, feathered or otherwise.

Gavin Baldree

Spokane

Speaker of the swamp

Recently, listening to the Republicans bickering over voting for the “speaker of the swamp,” I chuckled as Kevin McCarthy was referred to by a fellow Republican as the biggest alligator. The phrase, “It takes one to know one” comes to mind. It is my belief the Republican Party has a wealth of alligators including Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Majorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, as well as many others. A group of alligators is called a congregation and noted to be very social creatures. They are also cold-blooded predators who are not above eating their own species if opportunity arises.

For me, the Republican congressional representatives hit the nail on the head referring to themselves as alligators. Alligators live in swamps. Sadly, the “speaker of the swamp,” along with fellow alligators, will become cold-blooded predators who I strongly feel will destroy America’s freedom. They will destroy our affordable health care and social security, they will promote more gun violence and mass killings, they will copy the Taliban’s and Iran’s treatment of women as worthless chattel, they will ignore climate change and they will fail 100% to develop a “humane” immigration system. Most of all, they will increase their own dung heap of greed through dark money.

Perhaps those who voted for the alligators will find themselves on top of their food chain.

P.S. They have one month to totally reduce inflation as they promised!

Janet Smith

Spokane