My LTTE in response to anti-gay bigot [View All]

[mconvente]

Just emailed my LTTE to the editorial department of a local paper in northwest Bergen County (of NJ). This lady said that a newly formed Gay-Straight Alliance in a local highschool promotes homosexuality as "acceptable" - she claims homosexuality is "morally indefensible having been forbidden many times in the Old and New Testaments - humanity's source of the moral code".

Umm, more like the Christian Moral Code.

So I basically owned her in this letter. Hope it gets published next week! Hope you like it!

I find it very saddening that Ms. Benning does not support the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance at Mahwah High School. Though I myself am not gay, I have several gay friends who have told me of their pain as an adolescent; their daily struggle to exist in a world where gays are often relegated to the lowest of human existence can be very disillusioning and hurtful. It truly offends me how a woman who claims to be a Christian - a supposed person of love, caring, forgiveness, and acceptance - can so openly reject a group designed not to promote homosexuality as the paradigm lifestyle, but rather a group bringing gay and straight adolescents together to help cope with the overall hatred in the world today. I would hope that Ms. Benning would accept a group whose main goal is to promote tolerance and prevent physical and verbal abuse against homosexuals.

But perhaps an overriding issue is Ms. Benning's defense of her questioning the alliance with her claim that the Old and New Testaments are, and I quote, "humanity's source of the moral code." Though more than one hundred million Americans agree with that statement, it is quite egregious to refute the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Ms. Benning has, in effect, established Christianity as the official religion of Mahwah High School by rejecting the Mahwah High School Gay-Straight Alliance because it does not follow the Christian morality litmus test. Though Ms. Benning also claims that we should question what our public tax dollars are used for, I have no doubt that she would not have any problem with tax dollars funding a Bible Study group or after school prayer group in Mahwah High School - which by the way was ruled unconstitutional in the 1962 Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court Case.

Though I respect Ms. Benning's beliefs, I must also respect the United States Constitution. Morality in public establishments should not doctrined by any specific religion, but should be handled accordingly to professional research psychologists, such as well-known psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, who defined six stages of moral reasoning absent of any theology. If we were to enforce Christian morality codes, or any religions' morality codes, in public establishments, we would be on our way to resembling theocracies like Iran, ironically the same types of nations people like Ms. Benning criticize as being "unfree" and "dangerous".

Michael R Convente
"Give me a lever long enough... and I shall move the world." - Archimedes