Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 215 Editor's Choice: 15
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@StCheryl
[Read the article: I'm a bisexual Christian husband and father]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of my sons used to like to say, in an ironic tone, "Liars go to hell." Seem appropriate for this discussion, and your comments.
Here is the clip, unaltered, with the exception of bolding for the most pertinent comments, from your letter of Dec 2006:
I'm a lawyer with a full-time job, a husband and a child. Last time I checked, I was not a health care provider or worker. However, in the last several years, my elderly parents and parents-in-law have been in the hospital numerous times for serious accidents, unexplained pain and disabilities, chronic illness and health declines leading to death. I have helped them reorganize their finances and their lives to accommodate their changed circumstances.
So, which is it? Are you lying, or did you somehow get an advanced degree, along with a long practice, in the 1 year and 5 months since you wrote this? Because I'm sure that you would acknowledge that mental health professionals are considered health care providers.
I really don't give a good damn whether the LW is a bisexual or gay, whether he trends toward the straight or the gay end of the Kinsey scale, or what anybody here, myself included, believes about his sexuality. He has already decided that he is bi. His problem is, currently, how to remain a responsible adult, husband, father, within the boundaries of the social and sexual issues that surround him. You, and anyone else TELLING him that he is or is not gay is pretty fucking arrogant. For you, it's wrapped up in a particularly nasty lie.
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Choose: Give It Up or Give Him Up
[Read the article: My boyfriend has an abysmal environmental conscience]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because the way to make a relationship work is to accept our partner with love. Not to mold them into someone who we think we'd like better.
People rarely stay molded, you see.
So you really have those two choices, and the length of time you have in this relationship is NOTHING compared to what you'll have into it if you decide that you just.can't.stand.it, down the road.
You drive your car, he drives his. You set limits--if you want to burn the plastic off the copper, it's not my issue, unless you are doing it where I have to breathe the fumes. If you want to throw away paper and cans and carrot peels when there is a recycling barrel right here, go for it, but YOU will be paying for the garbage collection, because YOU are generating the bulk of the garbage. And then, let it go. You are his lover, not his mother, not his boss.
If you can't let it go...then you have the other option.
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Sweet is Great, But Sane is Better
[Read the article: My fiancé suddenly joined the Marines]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You sound like a wonderful young woman, and you deserve a husband, and a father for your future children, who you can count on. That means a lot of things, and one of them is being counted on to be the same person, with moderate variations, from day to day.
So that you don't wake up next to a professional safecracker one morning, a Marine the next, and a priest the third.
If he were willing to acknowledge that he has mental problems, and to get some help for them, that would be one thing. But he's not.
Love him, be concerned for his health, but for your own sake and that of your ova, don't marry him.
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Take the Opportunity and Run With It
[Read the article: The atheist and the creationist: Can't they just get along?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He's asking for your input, so give it to him.
Your hatred and revulsion for the asininity that is creationism is just as irrational as that belief system. Why on earth would you hate something that is stupid? Don't hate it, treat it seriously. Take it to its logical conclusion.
WHY do you think that so much of the pressure to mainstream creationism has disappeared? It's because, instead of getting angry, actual scientists started to publically deconstruct its tenets and to show how utterly unscientific it really is.
So do the same for your friend, and leave the anger at home. One of the things that would not exist, in a world that is NOT driven by evolutionary forces, is the ability of microorganisms to mutate and evolve in the presence of antibiotics. Discuss this with him, talk about the consequences of carrying a disbelief in evolution to that end: one would have to refuse to accept treatment with antibiotics that have been developed to treat resistant strains of bacteria. If there IS no evolution, then it's not possible for bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics in newer generations.
Nothing is served by responding to a perceived problem with hate and anger. Be better than the creationist idiots. Be the rational person that you believe yourself to be.