A Lamentable Proposal Continues to Come Under Attack

For once I am on the popular side of a controversy. Nine out of 10 readers agree that Jon (not John) K. Evans is absurd for proposing that all defective children be killed at birth.

Evans, a Mensan, defended that practice in a letter to me, quoting a column he had written for Lament, newsletter of the Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa. (Mensa members must score above 98% in the standard IQ test.)

Gerald Hollombe of Santa Monica, also a Mensan, chastises me for suggesting that Evans spoke for the group. “The general membership of Mensa is emphatically not cut from Evans’ cloth. I can’t imagine what possessed you to air this dirty laundry for the nation with the implication that it belongs to all of us.”

I made no such implication, I merely said that Evans was a member of Mensa, which he is, and that the argument he sent me had been written for Lament, which it had.

Mensan Hollombe must be suffering from low esteem if he fears that my readers would think Mensa members in general agree with Evans.

Letters from other Mensans suggest that they consider him an “irritant” and an embarrassment.

Laura Remson Mitchell, government issues coordinator for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (she has MS), objects to my comment that Evans might be kidding, and that I can get a joke.

“‘Let me assure you,” she says, “that violence against people with disabilities is no joke.”

Nothing more infuriates a fanatic than the suggestion that he is only kidding. I assure Mitchell that I did not think Evans’ idea funny. I assumed it would die of its own absurdity.

Mitchell says that by Evans’ rule such geniuses as Beethoven and physicist Stephen Hawking would be erased, noting that genetic technology may soon make it possible to foresee such disabilities as theirs before birth.

Arnold Federbush, a Mensan who has battled Evans in the columns of Lament, notes that when he was denounced by fellow Mensans Evans suffered “obvious pain,” and said his critics were falling into the same trap as those they were defending.

Evans and Federbush were vituperative in their exchanges, Evans degrading Federbush’s work with mentally retarded children and Federbush saying Evans “prides himself on his cold logic but falls into tantrums when criticized.”

Obviously, nothing I can say can hurt a man of such impenetrable ego. Why do I give him more space? Only to give his critics their say.

Writes Cynthia Turner, a Mensan who has quit L.A. Mensa because of Evans and his clique: “He might indeed be considered living proof that having a high IQ is no guarantee of being capable of rational thought.”

Numerous readers compared Evans’ proposal with Nazi methods: “It is obvious,” writes Alice Haney of Rialto, “that Adolf Hitler is alive and well and a member of Mensa. Does the National Enquirer know yet?”

“Thank you,” writes Deborah Blain Porter of Manhattan Beach, “for printing Mr. Evans’ letter, if only to let the rest of us know that there are such complete idiots out there passing themselves off as intelligent human beings.”

Bernadette McCrumb of Lynwood writes: “Evidently you came to the conclusion that Evans was writing satirically, as Swift did in his celebrated essay” (proposing that poor children be eaten by the rich). “Nay, not so! . . . I assure you that he meant every word. He often shocks the people who read Lament with assertions that defective and criminal elements should be summarily destroyed. He is avid about the death penalty, as you might assume. Once he even wrote a piece extolling the lynch mob. . . .”

“Beyond the question of ‘Who is to decide?’ . . . “ writes Bill Boeckman of Van Nuys, “my question is where is the compassion? Where there is compassion there is love. Children who will never even be able to read a Mensa exam have no difficulty expressing love. . . .”

However, Fred A. Glienna, whose intelligence I can vouch for, says Evans may be right. “Spoof or no, his suggestion underscores both the law of survival and our ironic misuse of our dwindling resources. . . .

“I submit that much of his rancor and frustration would disappear if we applauded excellence with the same enthusiasm and funding with which we encourage the less-gifted. In a society not choking to death with an obscene military budget, there would be room for both.”

I have a second letter from Evans advising me that the eucalyptus trees along Highway 101 were damaged by the winter freeze, not by blight, as I guessed.

“What rouses me to write you on the subject is the possibility that you had your head wedged in your computer during the past winter. . . . But then you’re a city boy now, and I guess you don’t notice what goes on outside of Los Angeles.”

Maybe I should be eliminated.