MORAL MONDAY
Deception was used to keep clergy locked out
I was one of the between 250 and 300 demonstrators from the Moral Monday group who met in front of the governor’s mansion this week. We came with a plan to hand-deliver 20,000 petitions to the governor asking him to sign onto the Affordable Care Act so that more than 600,000 uninsured Georgians could receive Medicaid. We demonstrated peacefully and legally.
When the group, led by clergy, carried a box filled with petitions to the east gate of the premises, the security people on the inside of the gate said, “This gate is broken. Why don’t you go to the back door?” (That’s not a good thing to say to an integrated group of peaceful clergy.) When that suggestion was refused, the group was told to go to the west gate. When we got there, we were told they had lost the key.
To paraphrase an old saying: Lie to us once, shame on you; lie to us twice, wait till November.
BETSEY MIKLETHUN, NORCROSS
MEDIA
Sensational coverage encourages misdeeds
Media coverage of crazies who senselessly attack, shoot, stab and kill innocent people is way beyond reporting. It’s ratings, and it’s sickening. The media gives national stage to killers. By naming them and printing their pictures and stories, the coverage gives them exactly what they commit horrific crimes to achieve: national spotlight and a legacy — a sick one, but a legacy no less. The media excuse: We don’t make the news, we report it. The media does contribute to it by over-sensationalizing killers and their deeds. Please wake up and stop naming the shooters. They don’t deserving our time or thought, and we absolutely do not need to understand their sickness or what drives them. Please think of the victims, and leave the killer to dwell in darkness, not shine in the spotlight.
TOM TICHENOR, ROSWELL
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Moral superiority’s a sense of self-delusion
At the risk of disturbing M. Gregg Fager’s sense of moral superiority (“The confusion over discrimination,” Opinion, April 4), his heterosexuality in and of itself does not make him morally superior to those with a homosexual orientation. The validation of this self-appointed, morally superior self-delusion is a lie unto itself, and has been responsible for the vicious dehumanization of homosexuality, which ultimately leads to the justification of the mistreatment of homosexuals. Is the systematic dehumanization of individuality wrong only when done on the basis of race, creed or national origin — and then suddenly becomes right when done under the guise of religion to justify hatred through delusional self-validation?
LYNN BAKER, ATLANTA
