Today's Letters: Demonstrators promote bigotry, not Christianity

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published June 25, 2007

New mix for pride, protest June 21  

You know, maybe the people who have voiced their opinions that the protesters should be allowed at the St. Pete Pride parade are right. If they voice the word of God as heard through the Bible, perhaps they have the right to be heard.

My concern is that they clearly have not gone far enough. I think we need to start protesting at divorce courts, as Jesus Christ stated that divorce is akin to adultery. I think we should allow protesters to stand outside of the homes of unmarried couples and assail them with quotations from the Bible that condemn sex outside of marriage. Maybe we should pass a city ordinance that would allow righteous Christians to throw stones at the cars of women who are pregnant out of wedlock. That is clearly required by the Bible. How about we allow people to protest outside of stores that sell shellfish or pork?

The Bible is full of passages that allow acts that we would today find offensive. These protesters are not voicing the word of God, they are voicing their own insecurity and prejudice. The question that we as a city must ask of ourselves is: What bigotry and prejudice is acceptable?

And as for all of you Christians who disagree with me, I have to ask: Are you a good Christian, or simply a bigot?

Edward Briggs, St. Petersburg

Unpopular protest

Let me get this straight. The St. Pete Pride parade and street festival can basically shut down an entire section of the city, but "free speech" is limited to an arbitrarily designated "free speech area"? Since when did the constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech get hog-tied and bundled off to the side?

It seems to me that the "pride" folks are exercising their free speech rights pretty much unrestricted. I guess that a protester's free speech doesn't matter if it disagrees with the cause celebre of the day.

Bert Vleming, Palm Harbor

What is she thinking? June 21, story

No sympathy here

The article about Cathy Salustri made me angry. After Don Imus and the racial controversy that revolved around an issue of basic respect for college kids playing their hardest in a championship game and Imus' "flipping the script" and making the issue about black male sexism in popular culture instead of his nearly 40 years of unabated racism and sexism, now we have this white woman who hates black people because she lost a weed whacker, a ladder, a chair and a scooter.

Recently, while waiting for a ride after work, I had five police cars pull up on me and for the second time in 20 years I had guns drawn on me. After my friend came and talked to the cops I was raging with nothing but anger. I was told I looked suspect because of some robberies by black males.

I have to swallow my pride and anger, but I have not been back to work or outside in nearly three weeks because I realized that if a white person bothered me in any way, however innocent, I would have responded not so kindly because of all that I as a black male have had to put up with in this society from people like Cathy Salustri.

If Salustri and writer Rodney Thrash wanted a dialogue on race and crime, they got it. I don't feel sorry for her "white angst" one bit because she has white privilege and can move to a safe place where she won't be bothered.

But unlike her, I can never have peace of mind because I have to deal with this society and realize that my skin color is more important than my character.

Eric Daniels, Tampa

A city divided

As a white woman, I find the sympathetic article on Cathy Salustri just another page in the ongoing offensive media campaign to criminalize the African community.

White people are snatching up houses and property in the historically African neighborhoods of St. Petersburg as investments or a chance to buy a home they would be priced out of elsewhere. This is called gentrification.

Yes, we have to talk about race in this country. We have to talk about how the U.S. economy was built on the enslavement of African people. We have to talk about how throughout the history of the United States, white people have gotten our jobs, rights, affluence and houses at the expense of the African community.

More than 10 years ago, after 18-year-old TyRon Lewis was killed by the police on 16th Street S, the Uhuru movement led the call for "economic development not police containment" in the African community.

For a minute there was hope that conditions could really change. Black people got Mayor Baker elected because he promised to deliver that economic development. Instead, Baker turned south-side real estate into an economic opportunity for white people and pushed out the African community.

Until we as a white community become committed to a St. Petersburg united in shared prosperity - no one at the expense of another - we will continue to be a city divided. The answer is in the demands led by the Uhuru movement: reparations and genuine economic development to the African community.

Penny Hess, St. Petersburg

Health care is broken

There is an ugly buzzword resurfacing among the Republican presidential candidates and the far-right talk radio crowd: "socialized medicine."

I wonder if the irresponsible people who use this term are aware that at least 18, 000 Americans die every year due to lack of health coverage, and nearly 50-million will go without insurance at some point this year.

Meanwhile, our corporate for-profit insurance system siphons an average of 20 percent off every transaction, enriching a handful of executives and stockholders and making our private-payer system the least efficient in the world. Compare that to Medicare, which averages about 3 percent overhead, but has no billionaire CEO.

America is the only remaining nation still refusing to deliver universal access to the medical system to its citizens. As a result, insurance companies make our health care decisions, millions go untreated, others stay in dead-end jobs so they don't lose health coverage, and the bottom line is profit, not successful health outcomes. For this we can thank the Republicans and their army of spinners, talkers and think tanks.

So when you hear people use the term "socialized medicine, " understand that they are pushing for a continuation of the current health care disaster.

The system is broken. It's time to get serious about universal health care.

Scott Cochran, Tampa

Seven years' bad news

When George W. Bush was first running for president, my nephew told me he was going to vote for him because he opposed abortion.

"But, " I tried to explain, "voting based on a single issue is not only naive but dangerous."

"Don't care, " said my nephew.

In the seven years since President Bush was elected we have thousands of Americans who have been killed or maimed in Iraq; thousands of Iraqis dead; our national debt in the trillions and growing; our Constitution being circumvented; illegal CIA torture chambers around the world; a weakening of environmental protections; a Justice Department that has become a leg of the administration; 50-million U.S. citizens without health care; a great many of the world's people hating Americans and, nephew, abortion is still legal.

Andy Antekeier, Indian Rocks Beach

On basic rights, U.S. lost its way June 18, editorial

Dangerous times

The essence of your editorial is that an al-Qaida terrorist is being denied his "rights." The government claims he was in a sleeper cell and was on a "martyr mission" to completely disrupt our financial system. Your editorial amazingly acknowledges that "this may all be true, " but you bemoan that none of this has been proven in a court of law.

You have got to be kidding. We are supposed to be giving U.S. trials to all of these foreign agents out to destroy us?

Why don't you discuss the unbelievably great job our government has done to prevent another 9/11? Using the Patriot Act laws (which you protest so much), they have stopped several major disasters: the airliners flying from England to the United States that were to be blown up in route; the Fort Dix plot to kill hundreds of soldiers; the most recent plot to destroy JFK airport and perhaps a good deal of Queens.

We are living in very dangerous times. Wake up!

James C. Bowers, Madeira Beach

[Last modified June 24, 2007, 20:44:24]