Every time I see a motorcyclist riding helmetless or someone in a car not wearing a seatbelt, I’m filled with a mixture of confusion and despair. I can’t understand why anyone would ignore two of the cheapest forms of health insurance available. Seatbelts come free with the car you purchased, and helmets are certainly cheaper than an emergency room visit.

Listen, I’m not naïve. I know that neither seatbelts nor helmets eliminate fatal accidents or serious injuries, but indisputable facts prove that they reduce them. I’m living proof of that. Were it not for a helmet sacrificing itself to save my life in 1971, I wouldn’t be here ranting at you. In fact, neither my two sons nor two grandsons would be here either.  By my count, that’s five lives saved by one helmet.

I know we live in a state where helmets are a matter of choice, and you’ll find no one more protective of one’s personal freedom than I am. But why use such a sacred right to justify such a bad decision? As for seatbelts, the only choice we have is to obey the law or break it. No middle ground there; make the right decision or you’re making two wrong ones. After all, few things restrict your personal freedom more than a hospital bed or a casket.

Certainly there are people in your life who would be devastated if you were seriously injured or killed, especially if it could have been prevented. Next time you’re faced with those choices, don’t just think of yourself, think of them.

Sincerely,

Chris M. Chacona

Susquehanna, PA

There's a big national hue and cry for defunding Planned Parenthood. The Republican Party is willing to play chicken with the President and let the government shut down over it, a tactic they've used before, to ill effect.

But let's have some clarity over this issue. By defunding Planned Parenthood, you won't be defunding abortion. That's because NO Federal tax money goes toward abortion. So decrees the Hyde Amendment, in effect since 1973.

When you defund Planned Parenthood, here's what you're really defunding: You defund mammograms and Pap smears. You defund pregnancy testing and prenatal checkups. You defund contraception, which prevents abortion! In sum, you're defunding women's reproductive health care. Little or none of these funds will be diverted to other organizations that provide the same services (if there even are enough of them)-- these services will simply be lost, to our detriment.

Why are the fanatics doing this? It's not about abortion, since as I've pointed out, no money goes to abortion from our tax dollars. What it's about (in addition to destroying PP) is stopping contraception itself. A large percentage of the activists on this issue are uber-Catholics acting from the asinine Humanae Vitae encyclical. In obedience to a long-departed Pope they're determined to take contraception away from Protestants, Atheists, members of all other religions. In this, they're simply out of line. (And note that they won't want to pay, either, for all the extra-- mostly unwanted-- people that will result. Not in welfare, but they will anyway, in increased criminal justice costs.)

But it's not only uber-Catholics, there are a lot of Protestant fanatics who are also part of this tyrannical vendetta. Their motive (in addition to destroying PP) is a retrograde concept of women and their role. To these fanatics, women are a public utility whose reproductive function must be subject to social control (socialized!), not to their own choices in the matter. In this, "the Land of the Free"!

So we must not allow the politicians to defund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood does a lot of good-- yes, even in providing tissue samples for research (samples that should simply be discarded, with no good to come of them at all?) Gotcha videos by a gang of snotty, misanthropic right-wing twerps, out to destroy any secular organization that helps people, are the impetus for this recent push. And the right-wing echo chamber has really run with this ball. Their vendetta must not be allowed to succeed. Unless a Taliban-style, Christian dictatorship sounds nifty to you.

Sincerely,

Stephen Van Eck

Rushville, PA

No decision has left the Supreme Court of the United States more bitterly divided. In a 4-to-5 ruling, the justices turned a millennial old understanding of marriage on its head. From ancient Roman times, or going back still further to the very dawn of creation, marriage was defined as the union of one man and one woman.

No more.

The four dissenting justices were unsparing in their scathing rebuttals of the landmark ruling. Their criticisms were not based on disapproval of a novel conception of marriage but rather on the absence of a constitutional basis for that decision.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. writing for the minority pilloried the majority for what he labeled as “an act of will, not legal judgment.” He wrote, “This court is not a legislature. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority's decision is a “threat to American democracy.” “It lacks,” he said, “even a thin veneer of law.”

Justice Clarence Thomas said it “will likely cause collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty.” Like a thousand Kim Davises?

Finally, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr, noted that “If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate.”

Flipping to the obverse side, writing for the majority was Justice Anthony Kennedy. He wrote that same-sex couples were only seeking to be a part of marriage not to refine it. “Their hope,” he wrote, “is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions.”

Kennedy offered no constitutional support to show that homosexual couples are marooned on islands of loneliness abandoned by all because they lacked marital status.

One wonders, with Kennedy, how many other sexual outliers are languishing on the uninhabited isles of despair?

There's the North American Man/Boy Love Association or NAMBLA, a pedophile advocacy organization. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws for sexual activity between men with minors.

And polygamists, let's not forget them. Are they not also stranded on distant lands waiting to be rescued from their status as societal outlaws?

One is reminded of Alito's statement, “the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is” what will be tolerated.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights, left no doubt as to how she would vote. Six weeks before the Court's same-sex decision Ginsburg officiated at a same-sex wedding.

Organizations advocating traditional marriage argued that she should recuse herself from the upcoming Court hearing on same-sex marriage. She refused.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “The constitutional right not to be discriminated against for any reason, including sexual orientation, is an established proposition of law.” But this “established constitutional right” is not found in the Constitution. The document makes no mention of marriage, neither does it prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.”

Justice Elena Kagan contradicted Sotomayor. She testified in her confirmation hearings that “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.” No matter. That did not stand in the way of her approval.

And last, Justice Stephen Breyer. He made the startling discovery that the Constitution approved of sodomy. This remarkable find was tucked away in the 5th Amendment, specifically in the phrase that protected citizens from “be[ing] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Imagine that. Sodomy, hidden in plain sight all these years until 2003 when Breyer had his Eureka! moment.

Consequent to this, laws against sodomy were overturned in 14 states making same-sex activity legal in every state and clearing the way for same-sex marriage.

With all five justices the decision to approve same-sex marriage was made long before arguments were made before the bench. Another commonality among the five was that their decisions validated their personal values and perhaps their lifestyles as well.

Their kindred spirit, President Obama, had the White House bathed in the rainbow colors of the LGBT to celebrate their singular view of marriage.

So there you have it. The Supreme Court's four nays and the five yeas on same-sex union.

But the larger issue is not on which side you fall down on. It is this: One vote---just one---would have reversed the decision from 4-to-5 to 5-to-4. One vote by one person affecting a nation of 320 million.

If that doesn't make you uneasy, it should.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA