A couple of years ago, Stephanie wore a tie-dyed, rainbow-colored shirt to church to match her mood on a bright and sunny morning. She had no idea that a federal court had issued a decision on a gay marriage case that week, or that there were plenty of rainbow parades getting airtime on the 24/7 news cycle to go along with a slew of social media posts shrouded in the colors of the spectrum.
My wife simply saw the bright sunshine and dressed accordingly for church that morning, but the interim pastor who was here at the time approached her after the service, visibly concerned, and asked if she “was making a statement.” As a lifelong Republican who has been active in local and state politics for decades I wasn’t surprised— but I was pissed.
I explained to the pastor that I agreed with her religious and political opposition to gay marriage, but challenged her suggestion that Christian conservatives who held that position should forfeit the rainbow because gay rights advocates had adopted it as their symbol. I was surprised to have to remind the minister that the rainbow was actually God’s gift to us after Noah’s flood— His promise to never again use a flood to destroy life on Earth. Why would Christian conservatives surrender the symbol to the “other side” just because they claimed it?
I had exactly the same thought when I received Jim Jones’ letter (below). I grew even angrier after I read his letter and quickly explained in an email of my own that I meant no offense and he shot back that he was “sorry I made it political,” and suggested I print an “apology” in this week’s paper.
I receive countless letters with the headline “We live in a great community,” and often change that headline. I have looked the word “community” up on several sources, and all of them list “village” as a synonym.
Just because Hillary Clinton used the word in a book title doesn’t mean I’m going to eliminate my own use of the term. In fact, as a conservative it is more likely that I will use it even more because I refuse to surrender a word with positive connotations because somebody I disagree with uses the term in a manner I disagree with.
The whole point of this being that I am sick of the way this page has been used to personally attack other members of the community— myself included— and won’t allow it to go without challenge anymore. As such, I either won’t print letters like this, or will accompany them with a response. If you choose to exercise your right to free speech by being uncivil to other community members and labeling them out of ignorance, please use FaceBook to do so. I hear Mark Zuckerberg embraces communication in any form, but this newspaper’s opinion page is going to hold to a higher standard moving forward.