Hatred Not a Family Value
On April 30, a group calling itself Americans for Common Sense managed to attract only a scant two dozen people to its anti-civil rights demonstration outside the Port Hueneme Seabee base. Of these 24 people, nearly one-third (seven total) were the same people who regularly engaged in harassment of women and staff of Oxnard’s Planned Parenthood clinic and who also regularly picket the Family Planning Associates clinic in Ventura.
Calling themselves “Americans for Common Sense” is nothing more than a neutral-sounding smoke-screen for a small group of agitators who have already shown clear ties to national extremist groups. It is to the credit of this community that, despite their well-publicized efforts and claims of majority, so few of this county’s residents showed up on their side of the road, and so many (three times their numbers) on the other.
No matter what our sexual orientation, whether heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bisexual, Americans with common sense and compassion know that tolerating discrimination and hatred against any group means that none of us is safe. Hatred is neither a family value nor a Christian one. We will continue to remind them until they get it.
S. MARLENE HEAD
Oxnard
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