Anger over use of “preference” is valid
Perry Foster knows all about weaponizing language as he does it all the time in his never-ending war on anything remotely progressive, dare I say liberal, with his diatribes.
His ideas smack of someone who follows retired Canadian professor Michel Chossudovsky, who is a champion of similar disinformation laced with conspiracy theories so loopy that he has said that Bill Gates is trying to bring about population control using COVID.
This time, Mr. Foster attacks liberals over the word progressive when it came up in the hearing for that female who is the idol of the political and religious far-right in the U.S. Words do matter, Mr. Foster, and her wilful blindness to the word “preference” is not benign. Its use by her says that she believes that being gay is a choice. It is no more a moral choice then being born blue-eyed or what colour your skin is.
So yes, the gay community and its supporters are right to be offended by her use of the term. I side with science which has shown without doubt that being born gay or straight is not a choice. It is what was decided right in the womb.
The word used by her is, in fact, weaponized by the white evangelicals who are on the verge with her nomination of over throwing the U.S. Constitution which was conceived by the Founding Fathers as a secular document, a document of the Age of Enlightenment by men who rejected religion as having any place in government. It fact, it was a Deist document which is to say an atheist document as Deists believed that if there were a god it was Nature itself.
This female so adored by white evangelicals who put Trump into the Oval Office are demanding payback from Donnie. If the soon to be lame duck Republican senators in their flagrant hypocrisy succeed in getting her onto the Supreme Court to try and hold onto power by a last ditch appeal to the religious right then the gains of the last 200 years in American society will be lost.
Mr. Foster seems to want us to believe that religion has nothing to do with the selection of the next Supreme Court member. It has everything to do with religion as reactionary Christians demand that the Constitution be reinterpreted as a Christian document and that America be turned into a theocracy.
It is wrong and intellectually dishonest not to talk about religion as religion, in the words of wiser people then me, poisons everything. And at this moment in time it has contributed to America being politically toxic as white Christian evangelicals smell blood in the water.
If there is any justice in the world, Trump will be in an orange jumpsuit after the coming election. But the damage he has done will live long after his reign of incompetence if the far-right has achieved their long held dream of stacking the Supreme Court with conservatives who regard themselves as the chosen ones to lead the U.S. back to the dark ages in politics and human rights.
I can only ask the editor not to shy away from my offending a segment of the readership who would agree with Mr. Perry and would even support Trump if they could as what is happening in the U.S. could easily happen here. Religious freedom must never mean that it has any right to interfere with the modern secular society outside of its own communities.
As attested to by the nomination of this female to the Supreme Court, the religious right seeks to dominate society by returning to the Dark Ages and void the hard fought for human rights which include, obviously, women’s rights including the right of women to control their own bodies.
This female nominee has stated that the Bible takes precedent over the Constitution and if anyone doesn’t find that horrifying then they are lost to the world of logic and reason. Makes me thank god that I am a secular humanist and a follower of science not dogma.
Robert T. Rock
Mission City
