Letters

Don't be cruel: Pets at risk in parked cars

With the weather heating up, the Humane Society of the United States would like to remind your readers that summer temperatures can be deadly for pets left unattended in parked cars.

In just minutes, pets left in parked cars can suffer heat stress, brain damage and death, even if you park in a shady spot or leave the window cracked. Pets just can't adjust to the quick rising temperatures inside a car. The best place for your pet is at home.

If you see a pet in a parked car, notify the closest business and ask them to make an announcement. If necessary, contact your local animal control officer or police officer to rescue the animal. The Humane Society has fliers to warn drivers of the danger of leaving animals in parked cars. To obtain a free flier, mail a business-size stamped, self-addressed envelope to The HSUS, 2100 L St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20037.

--Erik Sakach,

Director, West Coast Regional Office,

Humane Society of the United States

U.S.: world's policeman, world's garbageman

The one year anniversary of the 2003 Blackout will be upon us Aug. 14. The Secretary of the Department of Energy Abraham met with Herb Dhaliwal, the Energy Representative from Canada at the time. Spencer Abraham declared, "We will not provide the public with an incomplete picture. We will follow the facts wherever they take us. We will not jump to conclusions. This process will take some time." Nearly one year later Spencer Abraham has left us with an incomplete picture and no conclusions. DTE in Michigan is clamoring to raise electric rates even though they played no small part in the blackout and are subsidized by the federal government through nuclear power programs. Within the last week Spencer Abraham spoke in Vienna about "dirty "bombs, "Where 100 years ago authorities had to worry about the anarchist placing a bomb in the downtown square, now we must worry about the terrorist who places that bomb in the square, but packed with radiological material." He threw half a billion dollars on the table to fight the "radiological" threat. That is the branch of medicine that deals with the use of radioactive substances in diagnosis and treatment of disease. His answer to this "global" problem is to collect all of the radioactive medical waste in the world and dispose of it here in the United States. Where once this administration feared the role of World Policeman for our country, they now pursue the role of World Garbageman.

--Alfred Brock,

Canton, Mich.

Gay marriage a secular, personal matter

I would defend to the death someone's right to say things I disagree with, to preserve the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

And I may disagree with them, but I would also defend to the death someone's right to be a Baptist and to be married as a Baptist, as an Atheist--or even a Satanist--to preserve the First and 14th Amendments protections of religious freedom and equal protection.

Regardless of my feelings about homosexuals, I would defend to the death their right to equal protection and their right to marry who they choose, as I would for anyone.

The issue isn't gay rights or the sanctity of marriage. The issue is this: Would you defend the rights of someone you disagree with to preserve your own freedom, your own rights, and the Constitution of the United States? What is more important: your particular religious beliefs, or the document that protects your right to have them?

I want to live my life as a free man, in a free country that protects the rights of all people--including people I disagree with or even despise. How can anyone hate another person more than they love their country or their Constitution?

The sanctity of marriage under God should be left up to individual houses of worships. The right of marriage under the state is none of the business of you or your church. That is a civil, secular concern between two people who love each other, and the state bound by social contract to protect them.

Sanctity--the sacred--is not within the legitimate scope of the government. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." It is illegal for the government to regulate the sacred, and it is frightening to think it can be subject to popular vote.

How dare anyone suggest that "The People" have a right to vote to infringe upon the liberty of another group of people? Majority rule isn't American democracy. We are a Democratic Republic. Majority rule is Mob Rule.

Equal protection is for everyone, whether they have been born a different color, have been born gay, or have made a different choice than we would have liked. And separate is never equal.

In this state, Baptists are a minority. Yet, nobody has called for a referendum on the rights of Baptists to marry other Baptists. Don't Baptists deserve equal rights and equal protection under the law, even though they are not a racial minority and they have chosen their particular lifestyle? Do "The People" have the right to put the value of that lifestyle to a popular vote?

This is the very core of our Democracy and what it means to be an American--Liberty and Justice FOR ALL--whether you condemn or condone them.

Don't destroy the Constitution in a short-sighted attempt to lash out in the dark against those you fear. Love thy Constitution as thyself.

--Rev. Ian Brumberger

Brockton, Mass.