My Letter to the Editor
by JBEZL
Feb. 12, 2010 09:11

[This was published in my local newspaper on Feb. 13, 2010. I presented it as a Valentines Day gift to my wife, and she accepted it with a hug and a kiss.]

To the editor:

In his continued letters, pastor Dale Potter regales us with his and the Bible's opinions on homosexuality. And he makes a case that the United States was founded strictly upon Biblical principles.

I think Potter misses the point of the American Revolution, which was a special moment in history not because it was a religious one. It was momentous because it enshrined individual liberty, which is the right to have sex with men or women or both. It's the right to criticize one's government without fear of retribution. It's the right to go to church or to the synagogue or to the mosque, or just to stay home in your sweatpants watching reruns of Dirty Jobs.

Observe that Potter is a Christian who claims to have a relationship with the eternal being that created the heavens and the Earth and breathed life into humanity. And further note that Potter spends his time writing to a local newspaper on behalf of his God to bellyache about men having sex together.

Surely there are more pressing activities in the pastor's day planner. Somewhere, a woman has lost her husband and needs consoling. Somewhere, a man has a problem with alcohol that is destroying his family. Across the world, children are being sold into slavery; political dissidents are being tortured and killed, while pastor Potter is betraying an astonishing lack of context.

Jeremy Browning

Edited Apr. 06, 2010 17:44