Get states out of licensing marriage entirely
To the editor:
The United States of America, based on our Constitution and the states that comprise it, should get out of the marriage business entirely. The Supreme Court’s only legitimate role should be to make that statement clearly. The states should follow this approach.
A marriage is a function of whatever religious path you and your partner have chosen for yourselves. It should be you and your partner’s business and the church’s business, period. A civil union under law is a legitimate function of the state and should not discriminate based on the gender of the participants. The state does have an obligation to define what constitutes a civil union. Marriage is a function of your chosen religion, and a civil union is a function of the state.
Have you asked why a priest, rabbi, pastor or reverend should be licensed by the state to perform your marriage? It’s a religious ceremony! Have you asked why the state recognizes your religious ceremony under law, requires you to obtain the license from the state, and requires the functionary of your chosen religion performing the ceremony to be licensed by the state as well?
Weaving the church and state issues together is the problem.
DAVID BAKER
LAS VEGAS
Wake up
To the editor:
I applaud columnist Vin Suprynowicz (“The endless befuddlement over ‘need,’” March 24) for taking on the gun issue, FDR’s seizure of gold from the citizens and how Abraham Lincoln, in his efforts to prevent the secession, murdered fellow citizens and imprisoned newspaper editors. Mr. Lincoln’s total disregard of the United States Constitution in how he carried out his campaign to end the secession movement was wrong.
It should be mandatory that the public schools also teach how these so-called heroes accomplished their missions by trampling on the Constitution. Charter and private schools may do a better job.
And now our government-run schools teach the children that they were heroes and that guns shouldn’t be a part of a citizen’s life. Cupcakes which depicted a toy soldier carrying a rifle have been seized from a child in a government-run school. The teacher seized the cupcakes because they violated school policy about objects that depict guns.
The citizens in this country also had better wake up and see that the Cyprus situation may one day come to America. The amount of money this country is spending which it doesn’t have will come to a bad end one day. But before we reach total bankruptcy they will come for our personal money and attempt to take it.
A reporter recently asked a woman of voting age where her government assistance came from, and she replied, from “Obama’s stash.”
Now that’s scary.
MICHAEL O. KREPS
LAS VEGAS
More waste
To the editor:
I am absolutely thrilled to see and hear that the city of Las Vegas is awash with extra money (our tax dollars). The city obviously has no useful place to spend our hard-earned money because it is spending thousands of dollars on radio advertising telling us how city workers have gone green, are saving us money by their efforts, are doing a wonderful job working for us, the taxpayers, and obviously should be held in high esteem for their efforts.
Now, do we really need to hear these wasteful ads? The City Council members must be at their wit’s end trying to figure out how to spend our money so they can continue to ask us for more and more.
I have a suggestion for Mayor Carolyn Goodman and the City Council: Cut our taxes!
BOB DUBIN
LAS VEGAS
Drug detection
To the editor:
As a former police officer, I do agree with the Review-Journal that our Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure should be preserved by requiring warrants before using a drug-sniffing dog on a person’s private property (Friday editorial).
The real tragedy here is that the drug trade hides behind that very Fourth Amendment in conducting its nefarious business. Drug and narcotic cases are responsible for the majority of the decisions that now shape how police can conduct searches. Ironically, drug evidence is usually found in those cases, but unfortunately has to be excluded because of the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine.
Defense attorneys pull out all the stops when it comes to protecting drug dealers, especially given the fact that millions of dollars are at stake. In one case I remember, the defendant hid drugs in the diaper of a 6-month-old baby, but the case got thrown out because the baby wasn’t advised of its constitutional rights.
Perhaps the courts could give judicial notice to the use of polar bears or white sharks. The bear can smell a seal a mile away under 3 feet of ice in the arctic. The shark can smell a drop of blood in the ocean a mile away. Now, how to put these masters of smell on a leash?
RON MOERS
HENDERSON
Mass legalization
To the editor:
In response to Michael R. Stilley’s Friday letter, “Another Prohibition”:
I’m so tired of liberals that I have just decided to give in and support all of their ideas.
Why limit Mr. Stilley’s proposed legalization to marijuana? Why not encourage the Legislature to legalize opium, cocaine, heroin, oxycodone and any other mind-altering drugs, including date-rape drugs?
And, of course, legalize abortions up to age 1.
What am I missing here? Just legalize everything and let everyone fend for themselves.
VERN SMITH
LAS VEGAS
