Of Kirpans and Jilbabs
Gary D. Jensen September/October 1997
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Thanks (I Think)
I am not a fan of yours-I consider Liberty magazine to be a bias misrepresentation of the truth and only occasionally read your magazine to see what you are up to. However, I must admit that your recent article, "Getting Reality Right," was outstanding. Finally, you have written something worth reading!
SANDRA MEYER
Startup, Washington
Homophobes?
I agree wholeheartedly with your position relative to the mixing of politics and religion. They are as water is to oil in my view.
However, I am somewhat amused, bewildered, and frankly offended by some of the other positions taken in your magazine. While I agree wholeheartedly with your stand on religious liberty, I am sickened by the double standard some writers exhibit in demanding religious liberty for themselves-insisting that it be inviolate-while at the same time seeking to impose their bias and bigotry against all non-heterosexuals.
The slant of some of the writing has the stench of a particularly wretched feature of the church in general in our time. This stench relates to a selectively literalist fundamentalism which reads the Bible as though it were written to be comprehended literally, which of course is not the case at all.
Please remove me from your mailing list. I do not desire to receive your publication.
J. REVIERE, D.D., Ph.D.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
"Bias on the Bench?"
My ongoing dismay and distrust of our legal and judicial system has not been assuaged by this article on Judge Moore.
Ms. Hart states "His perspective is so skewed that he places his duty to God above what the law says." Subsequently, a panel of three judges removed Judge Roy Moore from jurisdiction in this case. Would Ms. Hart and Ms. Borden have raised the same issues had it been Mr. Borden who confessed to a homosexual affair during his marriage and custody and property assignment were thereby reversed?
One of the acknowledged great men of this century once stated that his disobedience of the law was not due to lack of respect for the law, but because he must adhere to a higher law. Perhaps Ms. Hart's final judgment, that which we shall all one day experience, will be at the hands of these same three judges and not the lawgiver who many of us, including Judge Roy Moore, obey? I hope for her sake that it is.
How very sad that this situation, and the legal machinations surrounding it, typify our country's abandonment of the Golden Rule and the will to "do the right thing."
JOSEPH R. DOMBROSKI
Chatsworth, Georgia
My wife and I have received your magazine for some time now. For the most part, we enjoy the editorial effort to make a good case for living up to the "Establishment Clause" aimed at separating church and state.
Unfortunately, the very lengthy discussion on Judge Moore and the governor of Alabama, regarding the Ten Commandments in Moore's courtroom, was entirely off on a tangent. While it may be annoying for non-Christians and non-Jews, the presence of the Ten Commandments in a judge's chambers does not automatically prejudice the legal proceedings taking place at that location.
I now find your magazine very offensive and must ask you to spare me the experience of receiving it in the future. I am sure there are others who enjoy your kind of sermonizing, let them receive our copy.
John J. Kepes, M.D.
Kansas City, Missouri
Thanks
I applaud and commend you as editor, and your staff and contributing editors, for the high quality of writing that appears in Liberty. I am in complete agreement with your Declaration of Principles. The articles are always timely and very well-written.
Incidentally, I am a 77-year-old retired Roman Catholic lawyer who is devoted to the Catholic faith but who is appalled by many of the pronouncements of its leaders. The Catholic Church in America and elsewhere even now is guilty of very many transgressions of the principle of separation of church and state-but not as many as the Christian Coalition!
A. LANE PLAUCH