Bruce Moorehead’s May 8th column (“Don’t Judge”) was very judgmental. The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament states that both homosexuality and shellfish are an abomination. Yet, you do not see people protesting against lobster rolls or shrimp scampi – just against marriage equality. Why is the Bible part of this discussion anyway? The very basis for America’s existence – and in fact, the reason for this country’s founding – is to have separation of church and state. According to the Bill of Rights, included in the U. S. Constitution, we are not only guaranteed freedom of religion but also freedom from religion.

Lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals and the transgendered – and Susquehanna County is chockablock with them – are not second class citizens. There is no tax break for gays, and there is no tax levied against gays. Gay people do not sit in the back of the bus or use separate drinking fountains the way “Negroes” were forced to before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, while being black is fairly obvious, it was not and still is not apparent who is gay. Not all gay people sit around sipping flirtinis and eating pink coconut things, while listening to show tunes and dishing the neighbors. They are your children, parents, siblings, friends, and in more than a few instances, your own spouses.

Despite the homophobia, explain why local businesses wait with bated breath for the two local gay camps to open on Memorial Day each year and accommodate the hundreds if not thousands of patrons who will frequent their restaurants, attend their yard sales, buy their propane, and otherwise infuse this area with money. Do they forgive them their sins and then swipe their MasterCard?

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus did attend the marriage of Cana – but that was about changing water to wine, Jesus’ first miracle – not a directive that a man must love only a woman, as Mr. Moorehead suggests. That allegory was not about judgment, Satan, or the superiority of one paradigm over another. If you truly believe you are a Christian, then you will follow what Jesus would have done: accept each other as equals, love each other, and help each other, regardless of sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, and no matter what color our president is.

The Gallup Poll for May 2013 reveals that Americans’ support for marriage equality is above 50% for the third consecutive year. Recently, Rhode Island and Delaware legalized same-sex marriage, and Minnesota will follow suit. That would bring the total number of states legally recognizing same-sex marriage to 12 – and counting. Just 3 years ago, support for marriage equality was 44%. The current 53% level of support is essentially double the 27% in Gallup’s first polling of gay marriage acceptance in 1996. This is not a religious issue. It is about American civil liberties. If this threatens your concept of matrimony, perhaps you ought to look at your own marriage and examine why someone else’s happiness would endanger yours. Leave the Bible out of it.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ron Gasbarro

New Milford, PA

I am writing this for two reasons. One of them, being to bring to light programs that are available to land owners. The other one to help the residents of Wayne and Pike County in Pa and Sullivan county in New York to understand the land owners are in dire straights. If the dairy farmers don’t get some help, they could lose their land and that would be a catastrophe for the Delaware River Basin.

Years ago, a man by the name of Gifford Pinchot was Pennsylvania’s Governor. His ancestors, who settled originally in Milford, PA were loggers and took an ax to anything valuable and devastated the area. Before they were finished they almost ruined the counties of Pike and Wayne by clearing all the land using no conservation practices.

As time went on Gifford saw the need to get the farmers out of the mud and built roads and created different organizations for the future generations for the benefit of all people, not just for the privileged. Also he wanted to help the economy seeking the greatest good. As time went on the Pinchot institute created common water partners, natural land trusts, and common water funds.

The common water fund is the one I am interested in. The now created Delaware river basin commission (DRBC ) has put a moratorium on the drilling for natural gas in the river basin, with no regard to the loss of economy and the possibility of the greater lose of the land which is still protected by good stewards of the land. If the dairy farmers don’t have the gas harvested from their properties they will lose the land to development and the clearing and lose the control of the whole water supply.

This is easily resolved, do what the “Common water fund” was set up for. Pay the farmers, dairy, forest, beef and any large land owner who is in jeopardy of losing their land because of no money from gas drilling. Like Gifford said for the ordinary citizen, greater good for the greatest number.

I suggest that the DRBC get in touch with the Common water funds and discuss the payments of insurance, health and life insurance to the farmers in the DRBC and since they, the great and powerful DRBC, are speaking for all the people they need to pay the landowners something to ease the pain of high costs until the moratorium is lifted and the gas extraction is allowed. The money is available please release it to all the farmers and landowners to save the land. The farmers don’t want to lose the purity of the country’s water either, but have to take the chance for their own good of survival and the trust of the drillers, who also don’t want to hurt Americas water...

I have to say I have my farm in Susquehanna county and the gas company whom I have a lease with will not drill my well because of the moratorium of the DRBC because they have many acres of leases tied up in Wayne county. So I am also at a disadvantage. I have cancer and am anticipating some wealth from the gas under my farm before I die.

This needs to be addressed. It is time that history and the good thinking caring people from our past have their words remembered and put to task the needs of the people. Now, the greatest need for the greatest number.

Sincerely,

Peter A. Seman

Thompson, Pa

This writer thinks so.

First, let’s define our terms. What is a disease? According to the dictionary, a disease “is a disorder or incorrectly functioning part of the body.” In this case, the disorder is in the body politic, and the body politic is the United States.

Like all diseases, feminism is characterized by a list of symptoms, primarily divorce, the trivialization of marriage, abortion, and the goal of total equality of the sexes.

Feminism has always been with us. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that its embers were fanned into flames by Betty Friedan’s seminal book, The Feminine Mystique. Women were oppressed, wrote Friedan, by marriage.

It was marriage, said Friedan, with the responsibilities of home, husband, and children that were anchoring women to homes disallowing them the freedom to pursue careers.

Following Friedan’s “liberating” lead, many women broke the shackles of marriage to realize their full potential in careers. Divorce, an anomaly in the ‘50s, spiked in the ‘60s. By the ‘70s it soared like Superman; it was “Up, up, and away.” Look at the statistics.

In 1955, a year of supposed oppression of women, it was 9 divorces per 1,000 women. Then in 1965, two years after Mystique was published, the rate went vertical from 10 per 1,000, to 23 per 1,000 in 1980. Currently, it seemed to have stabilized at 16 per 1,000 women.

Today, the percentage of unions ending up on the rocks is exactly 50 percent, the highest in the world.

Women initiate divorce twice as often as men. They are granted custody of the children 90 percent of the time. Median income for a single mother family is $25,000, less than one-third of that for married couples. Divorce is seldom economically liberating.

The 24 million children who are reared without a father suffer the most. They are 50 percent more likely to develop health problems. Three times more likely to need psychological help. And later as teens and adults their antisocial and criminal behavior are dramatically disproportionate compared to those from intact families.

The institution of marriage itself has suffered. There was a time when taking a vow “to love and cherish, forsaking all others, ‘till death do us part” meant something. Today it is honored in the breach: “Look, if it doesn’t work out we can always get divorced.”

Abortion is another liberating right, championed by the feminists. The graphs of divorce and abortion when overlayed show little difference.

In 1950, it was 0.01 abortions per 1,000 women. In 1968, shortly after Mystique appeared in bookstores, it was 0.14 per 1,000. From 1968 to 1980, it zoomed skyward like the caped emigrant from Krypton to 29 per 1,000, finally leveling at today’s 15 per 1,000 women.

But like divorce, abortion, too, has consequences.

Abortion is a grisly, stomach-wrenching operation that you will never see and seldom read about. The fetus and sometimes the fully recognizable baby is sucked out of the uterus piece-by-piece. Short-term complications of this procedure are excessive bleeding, abdominal swelling, pelvic infection, uterine perforation, cervical tears, and even death.

Long-term consequences are post-abortion depression, sexual dysfunction, infertility, and chronic guilt.

Lastly, the pursuit of sexual equality has difficulties that are bounded over by feminists as nimbly as the man of steel leaps “over tall buildings in a single bound.” For example . . .

The latest rallying cry by feminists is 50 percent; 50 percent of all top management jobs should go to women. Presumably feminists includes all other levels of employment as well. But here the math gets fuzzy.

Feminists blithely ignore their renegade sisters who, if finances allowed, want to be full-time homemakers. This would leave significantly less female careerists who would still lay claim to 50 percent of the jobs. Skipping this point, we continue.

Now things get really sticky. How do you fairly apportion half the jobs among the female minorities?

The distaff part of minorities are: whites = 32 percent; Hispanics = 8.3 percent; blacks = 7 percent; Asians = 2 percent; and others = 1.3 percent.

The consequences of social engineering by the numbers would be more layers of bureaucratic oversight, a blizzard of interminable lawsuits, crippling requirements for employers, and a boon to our overseas competitors.

Is the pathology of feminism, then, nothing more than another misbegotten child of the ‘60s? The wreckage of social norms, the ruin of time-honored conventions, and remains of a better time lead one to believe so.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA