Why can’t people argue their position?
To the editor:
There are two bogus approaches for arguing your position that seem to be more and more common in our national discourse: exaggerating your opponent’s position far beyond any reality and attacking people instead of arguing the merits of the particular issue.
Gerard Sanchez employs both these techniques in his Monday letter. He writes that the Catholic bishops’ disagreement over paying for birth control for employees means they are now “trying to put women in chastity belts.” In fact, employees are free to have as much sex as they want, and they are free to use or not use birth control as they wish.
Mr. Sanchez also throws in an attack comment about how the Catholic hierarchy covered up sexual abuse of children by priests, although this has nothing at all to do with the issue of Catholic employers (some of whom I assume have not covered up sexual abuse) paying for birth control benefits.
Instead of exaggerations and attacks, why not just explain your position on the issue and the reasons for your position?
I, for one, don’t understand how it’s the role of government to force any employer to provide birth control. Employers offer benefit plans to attract and retain good employees. Since it’s the employers’ money that they are spending on their benefit plans, shouldn’t the employer have the right to decide how it wants to spend the money to attract and retain the best possible staff?
Dave Newton
Las Vegas
Church has rights, too
To the editor:
Monday’s letter to the editor by Gerard Sanchez stated that the Catholic Church’s request for an exemption from providing birth control services through their church-run health institutions goes against the so-called constitutional separation of church and state implied in the First Amendment.
Of course, that phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution, but rather in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Virginia Brethren.
By ignoring the second part of the clause, specifically that Congress shall make no law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, Mr. Sanchez appears not to understand that the religious provisions of the First Amendment were to protect the church from government intrusion, not the other way around. That was the whole point: to keep the government out of the church.
Hence, rather than it being a case of the church not being able to tell the president what to do about medical care for women, as Mr. Sanchez states, it is a case of the president not being able to tell church officials they must violate their biblically-held matters of faith and conscience. The church has rights, too.
No one is denying anyone access to birth control. You just can’t make the church or its insurers pay for it when doing so goes against their tenets.
For the record, I’m a Protestant, not a Catholic, but I fully support the bishops’ position.
Norman Clow
Las Vegas
Glub, glub, glub
To the editor:
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s May 30 op-ed for the Review-Journal misses the most important point of the crisis: 71 percent of Nevada homeowners are underwater.
While the Obama administration’s efforts have increased applications for refinancing, most underwater homeowners haven’t been helped. For tens of thousands of Nevadans, the administration’s programs and the paltry “robo-signing” settlement mean nothing.
Before passing the buck to a broken Congress, here’s what President Obama can do to make a difference for underwater homeowners in Nevada:
First, it’s time for Fannie and Freddie to use their power to modify mortgages for families in need. If the head of the federal Housing Finance Agency won’t stand with Nevada families to make this happen, replace him.
Second, show us some progress with the Mortgage Fraud Task Force announced in the State of the Union. The banks and their executives broke the law, and they need to be brought to justice.
Third, make the banks we bailed out reset mortgages to fair market value, allowing consumers (the real job creators) to put Nevada back on solid economic ground.
President Obama needs to show leadership on the housing crisis. He, and perhaps the entire Democratic Party, will be judged on this issue come November.
Sebring Frehner
Las Vegas
Women as meat
To the editor:
I just finished reading Doug Elfman’s “clubbing” article in Friday’s Neon section.
At the end of his idiotic ruminations on women’s “tramp stamps” vs. side tattoos, he explains that women’s side tattoos are placed “in between their briskets and shanks.” Whaa?
In objectifying women’s bodies by literally referring to them as meat, Mr. Elfman has shown a vulgar and asinine misogyny. How horribly dated (Really? In this day and age?) and embarrassing.
Stephanie Chin
Las Vegas
Debate settled?
To the editor:
In his Friday column, the Review-Journal’s Steve Sebelius wrote “the place of Obama’s birth is a fact, not an ‘issue’ upon which one can have an opinion.”
The last time I was told I could not have an opinion because the issue was settled and not open for debate was the global warming crisis. We now know that was a scam, and I suspect we’ll find out the same thing with the president’s “birth certificate.”
Tom Porter
Las Vegas
