This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive:
I was shocked to find a billboard outside the River Road Middle School voting station endorsing “Republican” judges. It is unsettling to think not only of all the right-wingers who took those palm cards so they could vote their party-line, but also of all the liberals who took one so they could know who to vote against. North Carolina’s practice of electing Judges carries some profoundly disturbing ramifications for the impartiality of our court system.
How can an electable judge not recuse themselves from ruling on any case involving a voter? Consider the inherent conflicts of interest that arise. Judges have the incredible power to strip someone of their right to vote by finding them guilty of a felony. How are we to trust Judges who are dependent on the campaign contributions of the people appearing before them with that power? Any judge that receives campaign contributions from a political party would have an ethical responsibility to keep out of any case involving a member of either party.
Appointing judges with oversight committees, as Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist 78 to assure their position as an independent check on the Legislative and Executive branches, is not a perfect system, but forcing judges to pander to the electorate at the expense of their professional integrity is frighteningly distopian. Any judge who must campaign for their position is an activist judge, even, ironically, if they campaign against “judicial activism.” Our judges have a responsibility to approach every case without preconceived ideas, forcing them to wear their political beliefs on their sleeves to win popularity negates that possibility.
Bishop Little Joe Powell Jr. said during an NAACP forum, “God made Adam and Eve. He didn’t make Adam and Steve.”
This literal interpretation of Genesis may or may not be true, but God certainly did make Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who have been in a monogamous sexual relationship for six years now, completely ignoring potential female mates.
God also made female Japanese macaques, which have an extremely high incidence of homosexuality in their species because the females use it as a means to control reproductivity. God made flamingo males, which are known to pair off into couples and raise nests of adopted chicks that are larger than their heterosexual counterparts because the two males are able to secure a larger territory.
God also made giraffes, chimpanzees, right whales, apes, ostriches, mice and 1,500 other species that have all been observed in homosexual relations. According to the Oslo Natural History Museum’s exhibit titled “Against Nature?” homosexuality is well documented in 500 of these species.
This overwhelming body of evidence does not mean we can call homosexuality in homo sapiens natural, but it does mean we cannot call it unnatural either. The terms are simply inapplicable to this debate. This leaves the Albemarle’s lobbyists who oppose homosexual free speech with only their theological arguments, which are inadmissible in a country where we are free from religious oppression.
As for “Adam and Steve,” I will leave it to Bishop Powell to reconcile his interpretation of a God that considers homosexuality a sin, and yet fills its creation with so many homosexuals. I’m certain his irrational prejudice will find a satisfactory rationalization to ease whatever cognitive dissonance this contradiction between his beliefs and reality may cause.
This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive:
In just the last four years, the ACLU has filed over 20 lawsuits defending the rights of Christians to express themselves publicly. This includes the rights of students to wear T-shirts baring religious messages, distribute Christian literature on school grounds, to sing “Awesome God” at a second grade talent show, and to prevent schools from censoring religious yearbook entries.
Despite this activism, I do not consider the ACLU an organization with a Christian agenda, trying to replace the Enlightenment values on which America was founded with a Christian Theocracy. The ACLU embodies the principle most eloquently voiced by the French revolutionary author Voltaire, that “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
By contrast, a City Council and School Board that would usurp the Bill of Rights on purely religious grounds is a governing body that will prevent teaching biology, evolution, and inconvenient historical facts that conflict with their sectarian dogmatism. This is the intellectual blight and authoritarianism that invariably follows religious fundamentalism.
The ACLU will easily defeat any attempts to trample on our citizens’ First Amendment rights, because the same principles of free speech, free assembly, and free belief that protect our public school student’s after school Bible Study and Fellowship of Christian Athletes organizations, are the same Enlightenment principles that will ensure a Gay-Straight Alliance organization. Otherwise, we forsake our cultural heritage and the moral values on which our Founding Fathers established this great country.
