Letters To The Editor
September 15, 2010 - MidWeek
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Del.icio.usTax churches
Regarding Bob Jones’ column “Dragging Jesus Into The Campaign”: If churches want to play in the political arena - whether it’s advocating one candidate over another from the pulpit or organizing anti-civil union rallies and media campaigns - they should play by the same rules the rest of us play by. For example, many people may not realize that churches pay no property taxes. It’s time to make them pay their fair share. Also, the city’s coffers could use the money.
Gerald Davis
Honolulu
Holy candidates
What does Bob Jones have against voting for the most righteous candidate to lead us? I personally want men and women of God who seek to do the right thing in office.
Elaine Loo
Honolulu
Theocracy?
When government leaders base decisions on their religions, don’t we call that form of government a theocracy?
Is that what we really want for America, or for Hawaii? I surely don’t. And as we’ve seen in some of the religious-based campaigning this year, religion alone does not make a man moral.
David K. James
Honolulu
It’s just not right
For those who complained about Jerry Coffee’s column regarding the proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, please consider these items.
Catholic nuns wanted to build a convent next to a former Nazi concentration camp in order to pray daily for the souls of those murdered by the Nazis. After protests, Pope John withdrew the plans. He was sensitive to concerns of the protesters although the nuns had a right to build there.
South Carolina flew the Confederate flag atop the state Capitol for decades. The NAACP and other civil rights groups protested fiercely for years. It was finally taken down; the state government was sensitive to the concerns of the protesters although they had the right to fly the flag.
Disney wanted to build an American history park adjoining a Civil War battleground but decided not to in response to adverse reactions.
The “holier-than-thou” crowd is quick to pass judgment on opponents as “racists” or “anti-Muslim” but show no empathy for the majority of 9/11 families who look on the proposed facility as a bitter reminder of the Islamists who killed their loved ones. They rightly ask what is so important about this particular site that the imam is insisting that it be built there.
And if a mosque must be built there, why has the Port Authority refused to let the nearby Greek Orthodox church be rebuilt at Ground Zero? Where is their religious freedom?
Mr. Coffee was correct that visitors to the site will be able to hear the amplified call to worship five times a day. It will remind them that the murderers were motivated by radical Islam. Imam Feisal Abdel Rauf has done serious damage to relations between Muslim Americans and their fellow citizens.
Carol R. White
Honolulu
Israel’s lid off
Thanks to Jessica McGee and to MidWeek for a significant letter (“Evil Israel,” Aug. 18)! I am gratified that the lid is finally coming off Israel’s Zionist enterprise of decades-long evil. More and more people are peering inside and having the courage - driven purely from a self-interest perspective, as in Ms. McGee’s proper reference to “our national interest,” or in human-rights or international-law terms, as in this astute lady’s equally pointed reminder of “the way Israel treats its Palestinian citizens” - to give public notice of their dissatisfaction with the status quo. It’s about time - just ask the endangered species Christians and Muslims of Palestine.
Robert H. Stiver
Pearl City
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