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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 1999)
The I .Ity meir: from i eak on said. '1 m themst Battalion O PINION Page 7 • Monday, March 8, 1999 tee. CAFR1 usan Gt enefiel, eld man. Kens vid Ree: )efining family values roposed state amendments prohibiting adoption by homosexual couples discriminatory he 14th Amendment to perforH the Constitution is de- a mor:M signed to guarantee equal dt to seatment under the law for all an, ant jtizens of the United States, eat joi'B'o that end, it states, “No lie shall make or enforce any ,e P rc iw which shall abridge the ? ^wileges or immunities of citi- |s of the United States ... nor |y to any person within its al Libi: ntinuiri Brendan GUY ■ expa; ir i ;diction the equal protection of the laws.’ 3suppc*q Ua i treatment under the law is something vi- lelp >- r | c house; he saii illor any free society, something currently under ttack by two bills worming their way through the ■as State Legislature. HB382, sponsored by ■I.Warren Chisum of District 88, forbids homo- * lials to adopt children and HB415, sponsored 1 |fM^ e P-8°bert Talton of District 144, forbids homo- JMliials and bisexuals from even serving as foster Pp|pnts. • I A^hat kind of society is this if the government is 1 we< ^ to °P enl y discriminate against its citizens? 1 ili \doption has already been severely restricted ■9 :he lengthy and expensive approval process in- oh ed (to say nothing of the constant threat of a 1^/biological parent changing their mind and legally JI^Hllenging the adoption). The result of this has !%ln the imprisonment of thousands of children in d theelhanages, while people who want children turn willilertility drugs, surrogate mothers, artificial in- velop liination and countries with more reasonable jating dlption laws. teachitftut instead of being helpful to anyone who is ms, flially willing to go through all the time, expense mem I aggravation involved in trying to adopt a nbeis, the state legislature is now trying to forbid •th P r -iotentially-qualified parents from adopting chil li just because of their sexual orientation. This irtually criminal in its stupidity. What possible reason can there be for denying lomosexuals the right to adopt children? The best • ’\ hi)ig for kids in an orphanage is to be placed with roup t vin S famil y- ss of |The sexual orientation of the parents does not liter. What matters is that they love and support on children (or is the legislature really going to teacfry ind claim that it is better for children to be ad to vards of the state than to be raised by homosexu- teaclils?) The truth is the state has no legitimate reason sity. or discriminating against homosexuals. These two l toge*s are nothing more than ugly bigotry, plan and i pahfijiple. inter. • y said. nd sign } Spying racism /er, ssor in lege BUS! It does not matter if homosexuality is a choice or not, either way it is a lifestyle which does not hurt anyone and therefore the government should have no right to sin gle it out for punishment. At the risk of invoking the old slippery- slope argument, where is this going to end? Will homosexuals be banned from working as public school teachers or youth coun selors or any other job that would have them working around children? And what is going to limit this discrimination just to gays and bisexuals? After all, if unpopular sexual practices can justify virtual disenfranchisement, why not unpopular religious or political beliefs? This has to be stopped now, while we still can. Rule of law is dependent on having the law applied equally to everyone. When governments begin to discriminate against their citizens and apply the law arbitrarily, they destroy this, turning the law from a tool of justice into a tool of oppression. Now a case could possibly be made for the position that while legally and morally homosexuals should be able to adopt chil dren, practically it is not possible because of how those children would be treated by in tolerant idiots. But even this argument is deeply flawed. The adopted children of interracial cou ples are just as likely to face harassment and persecution, but (hopefully) no one would think of refusing interracial couples the right to adopt. This country simply can not afford to allow itself to be held hostage by bigots. This is unfair to the children who will have to face needless persecution, but it would be even more unfair to them to let them grow up in a society where people are bullied into not living their lives as they see fit, not just by individual idiots but also by the government. Homosexuals are just as much citizens of this country as anybody else. They are not lunatics, they are not criminals (technically they are in some states due to archaic blue laws that would be struck down if they were actually enforced) and their lifestyles do not hurt any body. Therefore they should have the same rights as everybody else, rights that include the right to adopt children. When the rights of any of our fel low citizens are abridged, all Americans lose. Just remember the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, “The Nazis first came for the Commu nists, and I didn’t object because I wasn’t a Com munist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t object because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t object because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t object because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me.” Brendan Guy is a senior political science and history major. indiscriminately detrimental to race relations 1 faaft^ he recent events in is Jasper are a "to use finite reminder inue Rt racism exists in K country. As are itruck tany of the views was nd teachings of oh ofmis Farrakhan. aught ■Racism, like many Ber social ills, will Zach HALL rr Y-o bably never completely end, but so- y is making great strides toward di- ishing racial intolerance, owever, if society hopes to end ism America must not only prose- ite and repudiate crimes such as those iasper, but it must also stop using at is referred to as the “race card.” A person is said to use the “race d” when he or she is being prosecut- for a crime and claims that he or she jeing prosecuted only because he or she is a minority. One may be familiar with this term as it was applied to the O.J. Simpson trial. Defense attorneys claimed that Simpson was the target of racial discrimination by the Los Angeles Police Department, specif ically because of Mark Fuhrman’s use of racial slurs. As a result, much of the prose cutions evidence against Simpson was deemed inadmissible. In a more recent case, Florita Bell Griffin, a Bryan resident, has been un der investigation by the FBI, Texas Rangers and a federal grand jury for al legedly participating in a theft and bribery scheme. Griffin, a board member of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, is claiming the investigation is driven by racism and sexism. Though no indictments have been handed down, Griffin has not revealed why she feels the investigations is moti vated by racism and sexism. Does she honestly believe that three state and federal agencies would allow an investigation to continue if it was driven only by racism and sexism? It is more likely that Griffin got caught with her hands in the cookie jar and saw that her only way out was by claiming racism. Society cannot expect to overcome racism when obvious criminals are ar guing that they are not guilty but rather the victims of racism. This is especially perplexing when celebrities and others jump on the “race bandwagon”, as was the case in the O.J. Simpson trial and Gary Graham murder case. Few people doubted that O.J. was guilty of murder, yet some were more concerned with the perception that the Los Angeles Police Department was tar geting O.J. because he was black than they were with the fact that he might have brutally murdered two people. In the Graham case, celebrities such “ff society hopes to one day eradicate racism, it must not tolerate 'false racism/” as Danny Glover and Kenny Rogers have jumped on Graham’s defense bandwagon and fought against his death sentence despite the fact a jury found him guilty and 36 subsequent ju dicial reviews have determined that he does not need a new trial. If society hopes to one day eradicate racism, it must not tolerate false racism as well. Those who cry “racist wolf” should be looked upon as harshly as those who are guilty of racism. Their exploitation of the judicial, po litical, societal or any other systems by using the “race card” is only counter productive to the goal of ending racism. If Florita Bell Griffin is guilty of theft and bribery, she should face up to her actions and accept her punishment. Her claims of racial discrimination will not only disrupt the pursuit of jus tice, but may also damage the reputa tions and careers of innocent people if her claims are not true. If America truly wants to become a color blind society and end racism, it must not tolerate those who use the “race card” for their own personal gain or to get themselves out of trouble, just as it does not tolerate those who use race to discriminate against others. Zach Hall is a senior philosophy major. Creationism uses faulty arguments In response to Christina Bar- rows’ Mar. 3 opinion column. I feel that it is advisable to set a few things straight regard ing Christina Barrows’ argument against evolutionism. First and foremost, it is im portant to clear up the meaning of the word theory. Evolution is deemed by scientific community as theory. In the scientific world, howev er, that word, theory, means fact, not just possibility. Hy potheses can only be consid ered theories upon rigorous testing and repeatable, unwa vering results; hence Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Creationists have read into evolutionist literature and tried to use that word against them, giving the impression that sci ence still does not fully accept evolution. However, its placement in scholarly literature means ex actly the opposite; evolution is fact, otherwise it would be the MAIL CALL hypothesis of evolution. Second, the statement that the creation of life is the same as “putting all the parts [of a computer] in a bag and shaking until done,” is a narrow-minded, oversimplified comparison be tween apples and oranges. Inert pieces of plastic and metal forming a complex ma chine is not even vaguely com parable to the story of life. The beginnings of life involved chemical reactions, not me chanical. After a considerable amount of time natural selection took over and steered life toward more complex physiology. Evidence of virtually every step of this process has been uncovered. The “gaps in evolu tion,” so touted by creationists, are shrinking with every new field season. In fact, the basic results of evolution are in almost every home in America. Dogs, cats and all other do mesticated plants and animals display every characteristic of selection and evolution. Just because Barrows cannot understand how something so complex and beautiful as life “happened by chance” does not mean that it could not happen. That is called an “argument through ignorance,” which relies on completely invalid reasoning. The only other reason for all that indicates evolution is that it is a complex plan by God to test our faith. To quote the late, great Bill Hicks: “Does it bother anyone to think that God... might be f—king with our heads?” Makes ya think ... Mason Miller Graduate Student The Battalion encourages letters to the ed itor. Letters must be 300 words or less and in clude the author’s name, class and phone number. The opinion editor reserves the right to edit letters for length, style, and accuracy. Letters may be submitted in person at 013 Reed Mc Donald with a valid student ID. Letters may also be mailed to: The Battalion - Mail Call 013 Reed McDonald Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3111 Campus Mail: 1131 Fax: (409) 845-2647 E-mail: batt@tamvml.tamu.edu
