All news should be covered equally
This letter is regarding the Viewpoint on Thursday, January 23. I feel that extensive coverage on minorities will only do more harm than good. The old phrase, “You cannot please everyone” holds true here, as The Reveille will never be able to please the entire campus.
There are far many more minorities than realized. Technically speaking, students who are from another state, are from another country, like sushi, have $1 million, are fans of Michael Jackson or drink krystale with all three meals can each be considered a part of their own respective minority. Now, I know that krystale enthusiasts will not be upset if they miss out on some coverage of their annual meeting where they watch old favorites like “Bambi” or “Dumbo” (What can I say? They love Disney!), but over coverage of one minority and under coverage of another minority can cause unneeded tensions.
There are two clear solutions to this problem. The first would be to ignore the problem and do what’s been done for years, but where’s the fun in that? The second solution would be to acknowledge the minorities and give them their own weekly supplement, aptly titled “Minority Report” (for symmetry with the super cool Speilberg movie). There are many cool things that can be done with “Minority Report.” For instance, there could be a comic strip that shows people of all races and sexual preferences having a grand time doing different activities. The movie rights for the comic strip would sell instantly, and a spinoff television series would obviously be needed to complement the hit movie.
Travis Detillier
Freshman — Mass Communication
Cross display doesn’t attack anyone
To call a passive display an attack is to declare differing views offensive simply because they exist. If you want to get that particular, my Christian views are being “attacked” every time someone wears a shirt with foul displays or language. If we were beating you with the small plywood crosses, then it would be a different story; however, the choice to look or to turn your head is your own.
Now Mr. Howser, how is this “your” university? The crosses were unloaded and erected by Students for Life — a recognized campus organization of students at LSU. We are all students as well as yourself. Which credentials assert this as “your” university yet not ours as well? In this nation and on this campus, your views have equal weight with everyone else’s.
As far as taking offense is concerned, the choice to be offended is as present as the choice NOT to be offended. If someone were to stand before me and slam my Christian beliefs, the “backwards” nature of my rural upbringing or the ecological inefficiency of the only car I could afford, the choice still remains. No matter how long they persisted or how many joined their efforts, even still the choice lays upon me. If I refuse to let someone else’s views or actions offend me, nothing they can do will force me to do otherwise. With that said, how are we to be held accountable for something you chose to do?
Zechariah J.K. Brewer
Sophomore — Business Administration
Taking aim at pro-life display
Little white crosses are sprawled out across prime university real estate; a silent, eerie protest against thirty years of legal precedents and established medical practice. But the cross-dappled Parade Ground also delivers a more subtle, often overlooked message: abortions by Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other non-Christians are just peachy. Among the 2,200 white and brown crosses (racially diverse or not enough time to finish painting?), there stands not a single Star of David, Crescent and Star or other non-Christian religious symbol.
Perhaps I spy a conspiracy by Protestant Christians to approve non-Christian abortions, even encourage them, in order to further their own tricky plans for God’s New Kingdom on Earth? The message is Hellfire and Brimstone for the Christian woman who opts to slaughter her wee unborn Christian soldier; a great wailing and gnashing of teeth shall be hers in the afterlife. But to the heathen gutterslut? Bah, who cares if they chose “pregnancy termination” on Monday, Wednesday and two times on Friday?
They’re destined for eternal damnation anyway.
Perhaps (and this might make more sense) the real source of right-wing Christian anxiety about abortion stems from the fact that Mary, Mother of Jesus, was a teenager and pregnant out of wedlock. The specter of the Second Coming being thwarted by an abortion must haunt them fiercely. Though if this is the case, a few Stars of David out with the crosses couldn’t hurt, since the first time around Jesus was a Jew.
What’s my point? Just that the anti-abortion movement pisses me off, and I hope to piss them off a little. Their passive occupation of vast tracts of University real estate, their dramatic scare tactics and emotional ploys, their attempts to intertwine their own breed of morality with politics and medicine, their failure to recognize the right of an individual to adhere his or her own moral code; all of it irritates the hell out of me. I patiently tolerate the affront to good taste that those little crosses present only because I believe in free speech.
Chris Broussard
Graduate Student — Political Science
Send this one to Leno’s ‘Headlines’
Here’s one for Jay Leno’s “Headlines” segment on the Tonight Show:
I opened today’s Reveille to the Viewpoints section and read two letters to the editor criticizing opponents of legalized abortion, then I turned to the News Briefs on page 2 and the bottom headline read, “Homeless men find baby’s body in trash.” If that trash can were in the back of an abortion clinic, what would be the big deal?
Jeffrey Hingle
Staff
States’ rights lost in abortion debate
Once again, a major historical date in the battle of abortion has come and gone, and frankly, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of hard-liners, one-liners, and the rest of the stuff spouted out by the two sides (whatever you call yourself: pro-blah) every time you get the opportunity to shove this issue down everybody’s throat. Therefore, to thumb my nose at you all, I’ve compiled my reason why all of you are wrong:
Roe v. Wade, or any future Supreme Court statement for or against abortion is unconstitutional. Now, the question is, “How can the Supreme Court, the judge of Constitutionality, be unconstitutional?” Well, I would say that it was wrong of the federal judicial system to take up any abortion case in the first place.
According to this little insignificant document called the U.S. Constitution, not that anyone cares about it, but I happen to like it, the powers of the federal government are enumerated. (ee-new-mur-a-tid: numbered and limited) Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution clearly states the powers of Congress, and abortion does not fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Secondly, Article Three, Section Two doesn’t give the Supreme Court jurisdiction over states and their own citizens, to which the abortion debate belongs. Abortion was an issue settled within a state, and the individual states banned or allowed it. Therefore, the Supreme Court, or any federal court, had no right to trump the state supreme courts. Finally comes my favorite part of the Constitution: the one nobody cares about.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Tenth Amendment bans the federal government from intervening in the rights and privileges of the states and people. Since it is obvious that abortion legislation or jurisdiction doesn’t fall within the federal government’s purview, how can a federal statute legitimately affect abortion in any way? Plainly it can’t, and it needs to get off of the federal agenda and back on the states’.
Benjamin Mabry
Sophomore — Political Science