House Bill 1228
I can't wait for that bill to pass which allows me to disobey any law that burdens my religious conscience. Don't tread on me!
My religion is a blend of Buddhism, Christianity, Existentialism, Neo-Animism, Pantheism, and Taoism, which I call Coralieism. At the moment I can't think of any local laws that burden my conscience, but given time I'm sure to come up with something.
CORALIE KOONCE
Fayetteville
The race is on
NASCAR is in season. Or should I say "in session"?
Are legislators given immunity from traffic laws? Twice this week, I've nearly been run off the road by a white Suburban and a burgundy Accord with legislators' license plates while I was driving the speed limit among 18-wheelers and law-abiding drivers. These two were driving erratically while texting.
If we'd been on a NASCAR track, I'd understand their having numbers on their cars and their "other drivers be damned" attitudes.
Blondie at least had her cell phone up on the steering wheel while lunging and falling back, lunging and falling back through the treacherous I-30/Airport/Pine Bluff interchange before passing me on the right as 18-wheelers merged from the right, but Bubba kept weaving because he kept looking down at his console (as if nobody could tell) while weaving into the center lane and onto the left shoulder as cars stacked up behind him on I-40 between Conway and Mayflower .
Didn't the Legislature of the state of Arkansas outlaw texting and driving?
LEE LYLE
North Little Rock
Making a mistake
From America's beginnings, God has blessed this nation more than any other nation in history. Just look at all that America has been given. Yet we are throwing it all away by throwing God out of America. I believe he grieves for this nation because we have turned away from him.
For a long time now America has been saying, "No thank you" to God. "We don't need you, we can handle things ourselves." Can we really? What a deluded people we are!
God will allow us to have our way, but in His word to us He offers us a better way: "If my people who are called by name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." When will we realize the terrible mistake we're making and come back to God?
LOIS WISE
Wynne
A reasoned approach
In response to Dana D. Kelley’s opinion piece of Feb. 27 with the headline “Origin of rights matter”:
He is basically saying that our rights are granted by God according to the U.S. Constitution; that the Founding Fathers stated that the inalienable rights were granted by the “Creator.”
Our Founding Fathers existed in a world that saw rights trampled by tyranny. As a result, they sought to create a place where people could live free from that tyranny, to pursue happiness without fear of reprisal from an overbearing state. They created a document that would, in writing, cement these ideals. However, it’s next to impossible to create a document whose singular intent is universally accepted. As with all ideas once written down, they tend to be subject to interpretation, which isn’t static at all.
What we consider “knowledge” is a fundamental and ever-evolving characteristic of our humanity. As times and, inevitably, our understanding change, so too must our interpretation. While documents like the Bible and to a lesser degree the Constitution are relatively static, our understanding of these writings is not static. Past interpretations have allowed the moral justification for slavery and the subversion of the rights of women, for instance, yet over time these earlier interpretations have given way to constitutional amendments that allow for a more reasoned approach to the intent of the original document.
Rights are rights whether you’re female, male, black or white, etc. The intent of the document hasn’t changed in these situations; our understanding of that intent has. In a much larger sense then, God, the grantor of rights, doesn’t change, it is our understanding of Him that changes.
DOUG MELKOVITZ
Little Rock
Marriage animosity
I am puzzled by the animosity toward same-sex couples getting married. I don’t care who marries. It’s no skin off my nose. If two people love each other, are kind and considerate of each other and want to marry, it’s none of my business, nor yours.
I suspect that much of this animosity is based on what is written in the Bible about homosexuality being an abomination. What one has to recognize is the people who wrote the Bible (with God’s help, Billy Graham might say), knew nothing about modern medical science and what may happen to a child while it is in its mother’s womb. They didn’t even know about the connection between germs and diseases. They wouldn’t have known a germ from a camel.
There are legal and tax advantages to being married. I speak as a man who has been married to the same woman for more than 66 years. We both agree that it has worked out well. So ease up, you guys. Don’t be a homophobe.
JACK C. McFARLIN
Little Rock
Editorial on 03/05/2015