[In] answer to [the letter]: “Enforcing the bathroom law,” [Feb. 8, Xpress]: A little bird, you can hold it in your hand; it weighs hardly anything. It knows if it is male or female. It knows what kind it is. You don’t see birds [that are] part robin and part blue jay. It is still just like at the Creation. It has not been to a university of men. After God created man in Genesis 1:26, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.
Imagine the Earth and the only people on it were 100 people: 50 couples — 25 couples of two males together, 25 couples of two females together. They are all virgins, they are all 18 years old, this is all they do their entire life. What happens after 75-100 years? They are all dead. They said no to God.
Do you remember the news reporting about the young people being molested by the priests? Were these priests punished? No, they were sent down to another church. Read about the worldwide false religious power in Revelation 17; notice Verse 9, and realize that 9 and 18 tell who and where the power is. Young people, do not be deceived by false teachers. They do not have your well-being in mind. The little bird is much smarter than all of them put together.
— Tom Robinson
Burnsville
Great introspective letter!
(get YOUR children OUT of government screwls as fast as you CAN!)
I don’t know how to break this to you, Tom, but, uh, you still have some things to learn about the birds and the . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/science/does-bird-mating-ever-cross-the-species-line.html.
Hope you’re sitting down, Tom. It gets worse: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04animals-t.html?pagewanted=all.
Tom: my friend Marcy in college had a cat – “Fenwick” – and let me tell you, Fenwick was definitely gay.
I believe this is consistent with Muslim thought.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
So apparently the MX “civility challenge” means printing letters citing the Bible to justify prejudice, but not gentle humor about nature’s refusal to follow biblical standards on sexual behavior? Got it. Enjoy a comments section filled with smears, innuendo and crankery, since it’s what you’re actively choosing to cultivate.
Oh, whew. That’s what it was. I thought all those comments had been taken up in the Rapture.
For the benefit of noncombatants, I was responding to a (now deleted) comment which (ironically) was objecting to the deletion of a whole string of perfectly inoffensive comments (including wonderful clips of Eddie Izzard, Jane Lynch and the Monty Pythons) that poked some gentle fun at Bible-based sociological theory. It was quite a sweeping purge by the Xpress moderation team — some say the biggest mass extinction since the catastrophe on Gay Earth.
Oh, wait. The (now restored) comment complaining about the various other (still deleted) satirical comments is back up, and my heartfelt response once more can be appreciated in the discursive atmosphere of mutual respect and innocuous banter for which it was intended. (See editor’s remarks below.)
Hi Luther,
Please keep in mind two things: 1)Letters to the editor and comments are two different things 2) There’s a difference between gentle humor and outright mockery over someone’s heartfelt opinion.
The civility challenge is shutting down the very things you claim it’s cultivating (as a moderator I can tell you the atmosphere is generally much better than it was and getting better all the time). It was the comments we deleted from this thread which included jeers and innuendo that bring the level of discourse away from mutual respect. Please help us get to that place of respect for people.
Mutual respect requires that, uh, the respect be mutual. What in that letter is respectful?
Seriously, Able. What in that is respectful? I’m not talking about coarse language. I’m talking about the implicit labeling of any non-gender-normative people as “unnatural.” Now, Tom doesn’t use that word, no, but the letter’s incivility is evident to anyone with any care.
“A little bird, you can hold it in your hand; it weighs hardly anything. It knows if it is male or female. It knows what kind it is.”
It knows “what kind it is.” Presumably anyone who feels at odds with their genitalia assignment simply doesn’t know “what kind they are.” Thankfully we have Tom here to tell us what kind they are. Unnatural. Behaving contrary to God’s word. Civility, where?
These people just need to know their rightful place, apparently. How is this qualitatively different from arguments over the centuries that confined minority after minority to lesser social status, ridicule, torture, enslavement, death?
It’s fascistic moralizing, and it deserves being called out as such. Which is the civil thing to do, when you see a paper of record peddling such base opinions.
For all the folks who want to turn this thread into a discussion on the civility challenge — that’s not the topic. Please take that discussion to the proper thread. We will read and consider all the discussion about it here: https://mountainx.com/opinion/a-polite-way-to-put-it-xpress-issues-civility-challenge/
As for this letter, the way Tom is expressing his opinion is within bounds. It is in no way the viewpoint of Mountain Xpress, and as with many opinions, some may find the content hurtful, but it is not an uncivil attack. Commenters and other letter writers are perfectly welcome to challenge the opinions expressed here — for example, but overt mocking will not be accepted as civil when there is a fine and potentially productive discussion to be had here.
I’m curious, and this is on-topic: what makes an expression that LGBT are unnatural and going contrary to God’s Word a “within bounds” topic for discussion?
Ask yourself, Able, if Tom’s same statements had been made about African-Americans, would you have put them in your paper? Would they have been “not an uncivil attack”?
I’m just curious as to why the LGBT community should be asked to stand for this kind of hateful rhetoric. And why you feel that a “productive discussion” can be had when one side is basically saying “you’re aberrant.”
I agree with Huhsure on this one. I understand the difference between a letter and an online comment. But when a letter contains such judgmental disparagement of an entire class of your readers, I believe it’s unfair and untenable to block people’s responses.
I wish I had the letter-writer’s clout with the civility cops. He got away with calling everyone who disagrees with him a birdbrain.
I appreciate all of your passion and curiosity, and I respect your commitment to expressing your concerns when it comes to what speech is allowed and what speech isn’t. Here’s the bottom line: We generally publish letters when they have a respectful tone, even when they call into question societal norms and broadly held moral beliefs. This letter writer is giving his perspective based on his religious beliefs and we at Xpress believe that it is the purpose of a good letters section to foster community dialogue. Sometimes that dialogue can offend even when the writers don’t set out with insulting intentions. Our counsel to commenters who object to a letter or feel insulted by it is to respond with a respectful tone and a civil disposition. We believe that will bring about the best discussion.
I understand that you see this letter’s topic as inherently offensive and disrespectful. However, the letter writer expresses a very real perspective on the question of what our society will accept. Even as we speak, proposed religious freedom laws are directly opposing what the LGBTQ community and allies see as rights. In America’s history we have seen religious people and groups land firmly on different sides of contentious issues, but all sides’ religious perspectives have been a significant and protected part of their social arguments. Tom Robinson’s LTE (which was in response to a letter about HB2) was presenting a biblical take on a political issue.The whole reason there even was an HB2 is that there are enough legislators (and constituents) who hold conservative religious views. So then not to allow people with that way of looking at the world to write LTEs stating their views is to establish an Opinion section bubble that tends to only reflect progressive viewpoints and values.
Able – your latest comment is well-considered and stated. Your message is clearly not reaching some people but it’s not because you were inarticulate. Some are just utterly shut down.
Look, I don’t agree with Tom’s views but I sure as heck believe he has the right to express them. And, NO, I don’t want to live in censored, partisan bubble-land.
Finally, there were so many LTE over the last couple years with people spewing nasty, baseless and bigoted “views” about white people (that they purely got from television and couldn’t support when questioned) and where were these inflamed commenters then?
I find it alarming that any member of the so called free press feels comfortable censoring anything but direct physical threats. This is also a reason why so many liberal corporate “news” groups are failing so miserably.
No chilling effect here, nope.
This is a curious phrasing: “a very real perspective on the question of what our society will accept.” So, the perspective is “real”. No one argues that. The issue is that you post a LTE overflowing with retrograde fear and resentment, foundationless except for some pseudo-scientific claptrap and a threadbare interpretation of a Bible verse, and expect people to respond to it with something other than mockery.
We’re supposed to use this as a teaching moment? We’re supposed to once again take our time to school those unschooled in science, unschooled in elementary school instruction on sex and gender, on the panoply of sexual expression that occurs not only in humankind, but throughout nature?
And we’re to do it in a soothing tone, so as not to hurt the feelings of those who, due to their ignorance and fear, condemn a population of citizens to discrimination, ridicule and abuse?
That, in itself, is ridiculous. You want a civil discussion? A good place to start would be with something other than “you folk are aberrant in the eyes of God.”
But, as I said, I’m not asking for censorship. Quite the opposite, I’m asking that you do what you seem unwilling to do: allow such baseless, backward drivel to be countered with the scorn it rightly deserves.
To do anything less is to tilt the balance in favor of those who spew hate and division with a smile.
Good news, brothers! I am instructed by e-mail that the only comment of mine which actually died in The Purge — “Now, now. It’s all part of Her plan.” — is permissible under the Civility Code, if humbly and inexplicably inserted at the end of this thread where no one will understand it and potentially be led into temptation. Apparently I was merely strolling in the wrong place when the commandant yelled “fire” at those other scamps. Hence the injustice to me has been corrected, though it is unclear whether commissary privileges will ever be restored.
Mr. Robinson, you do realize that when God created Eve from Adam’s Rib, that rib had male DNA, right? So for Eve’s creation, God had to change that DNA to female, making Eve the first Transsexual. (Either that, or Adam was Intersexed and had BOTH male and female DNA.)