To the Readers' Forum:
In regards to the recent letter entitled "Gay Rights Movement Is Based On a Hoax," speaking of hoaxes, the first quote referenced in the letter is a fake one. George Washington never said "It is impossible to rightly govern without god and the bible"
his quote is often brought up by Christians, but sadly, there is no evidence that George Washington ever said it. Sometimes it is claimed that he stated it in his 1796 farewell speech, sometimes its in a letter to a friend, and sometimes its from the 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation.
However, this quote was never stated by Washington in any of these venues. There is some evidence that Washington may have made a statement that the universe could not have begun to operate without a creator, but this was a common deist belief at the time, and was not necessarily connected to the Christian god.
Next we get mention of the Ben Franklyn prayer speech, of which the result was conveniently left out: The Convention did not pass the motion.
Next we get mention of the First Amendment. But the truth is that the U.S. Constitution binds us at all levels of government, be it federal or state. If a law is deemed unconstitutional it cannot be upheld at the federal, state, or local level.
Once we can see that our nation does not enforce laws based on religious scripture, the entire argument regarding what Jesus or the Bible said is moot. It matters equally as much as what Mohammed or Buddha said, as our laws do not respect any particular religion.
We then go on to get a gross misunderstanding of heredity and genetics. The author implies that if homosexuality was genetic, then: "100 percent of the identical twins of 'gays' would also be gay!".
Nope. According to this reasoning, 100 percent of identical twins of people with Type 1 Diabetes would also have Type 1 Diabetes, which isn't the case, as diabetes is usually discordant, even among monozygotic twins.
So, is the conclusion that Type 1 Diabetes is also a choice?
Also, many other epigenetics and chromosome linkage studies have shown a genetic factor in homosexuality. (Bocklandt et al. (2006) and Binbin Wang et al. (2011), just to name two).
The more I read these letters the more I can see that there is no valid reason to block gay marriage.
Lillian N. Rader
Lakewood