Morals objections aren’t enough for marriage law
Nathan Urbancic stated in the Oct. 16 letter “”Anti-Prop. 107 column rife with hypocrisy”” that his “”moral objection”” to same-sex marriage did not give him the right to hate those who feel differently but it does give him the right to disagree. A valid point, but I think he should have asked one more question: Should moral objections make laws? Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinions, but, majority or not, your morals should not dictate how others live.
The same-sex marriage debate has always left me wondering why people care so much about other people’s personal lives. To those opposed to same-sex marriage, I would like to know; how would it affect your life? Allowing two men or two women to marry isn’t hurting anyone, but prohibiting it does. If two people who love and want to commit to each other are destroying the sanctity of marriage, then what is the 60 percent divorce rate doing to it? And if not same-sex marriage, then why not civil unions? No one should be denied basic rights because of their sexual orientation.
Many people’s opposition to same-sex marriage seems to stem from religious views. The Bible, or any other religious text, shouldn’t be used to define marriage in a government built on the separation of church and state. Not everyone’s morals come from the same place.
It would be idealistic and naive to expect that religion isn’t a part of the government. With this country’s vast Christian majority, it’s going to enter into politics in one way or another, but to use your religion to tell others what they can or can’t do is wrong. Religion is a powerful thing, but it should be personal, not political.
So, if you’re morally opposed to same-sex marriage, that’s fine, just don’t get one.
Ashley Geiger
pre-physiology freshman
Lebanon has suffered consequences of war
Greg Knehans’ Thursday letter to the editor, “”U.S. has everything to do with Israeli War”” is quite upsetting. Knehans says that it is false to assert that the war between Israel and Lebanon was started by Lebanon. Then, he forgets to back up this statement, and that is insulting to every reader. If we are going to play the finger-pointing game, perhaps I should remind Knehans of facts that are easy to forget or do not warrant mentioning in western media: Katyusha rockets have been falling consistently on northern Israel from Lebanon since the 1970s. The war this summer was not isolated to the kidnapping of some soldiers, and to make that statement is false. It is unreal to expect a country to put up with such harassment for so long without any retaliation. Perhaps I can agree that it was not Lebanon who started the war, but Hezbollah; however, there has been minimal, if any effort, by the Lebanese authorities to control that group, and for that, the Lebanese must unfortunately suffer the consequences.
Hadar Avrahami
second-year law student
An overlooked candidate for governor
It is self-evident that there is too much cronyism in Arizona’s two-party system. This is why I, Steven Aleck, am throwing my hat and my steel gauntlet into the Arizona gubernatorial race on the Feudalist Party ticket. I stand for the ideals this great nation was founded upon. Unfortunately, both parties are full of ivory-tower intellectuals who are completely out of touch with reality. If elected governor, I promise to build a new glorious tower from the bones of the enemies of this great nation. I am the only gubernatorial candidate that takes the issue of national security seriously. A wall on our southern border does not go far enough. We also need walls on the eastern, western and northern borders with stone turrets from which our archers can rain down a storm of arrows on the enemies of this great nation, al-Qaida. Furthermore, I believe in education reform. Education is the greatest second threat to this great nation. I also have a simple and working answer to tax reform: Everything belongs to me. Help me help you to build an empire of blood… and also dinosaurs. Big ones. This great nation.
Steven Aleck, feudalist
clarinet performance senior
UA phonebook should be private
In a follow-up to my letter about UA e-mail accounts (Thursday’s “”UA e-mail needs better filters””), I received a letter from a UA e-mail administrator. He was very nice and explained that the UA does not sell any personal information, including e-mail addresses, to any outside entity. I wanted to set the record straight, and stand corrected, as I said I would.
He explained that outside entities obtain university e-mail addresses because they are available online in the UA phonebook as public domain. He mentioned that putting our e-mail addresses in places like www.facebook.com or mailing lists can contribute to that as well. One suggestion he had was to utilize the “”spamcan”” option on the e-mail and to also change the spam “”scoring”” that the university employs when deflecting spam. The default number is seven, but he said that setting it lower would catch more spam (though also the occasional false positive). Both of these things can be done in the spam section of the e-mail account.
However, my suggestion to the central server guys would be to make the UA phonebook private access only, or an option made available for it to be set to private (only UA students and faculty) or taken off. I can take all the precautions I want and still get spam because of the UA phonebook being public access.
Janne Perona
criminal justice administration junior
