Gay Club Ban, Carter on Hate

The Salt Lake City Board of Education’s recent decision to ban the Gay / Straight Alliance (and all other clubs) greatly disturbs me (Feb. 22). It disturbs me that adults would intervene with a student organization that strives to increase understanding between different groups of people. As a product of the Utah school system, I do not support nor share the prejudice of the Salt Lake school board. The young adults who started the Gay / Straight Alliance are to be commended for their courage to speak out and for offering a valuable resource for other students.

As a Mormon, I was disappointed in January when California’s Mormon leaders instructed local congregations to encourage state representatives to vote for anti-gay legislation. I do not support the Latter-day Saints church’s involvement in secular affairs and find it reprehensible that Mormon leaders would attempt to ecclesiastically justify their bigotry and tell church members which position we should take on the issue.

I value diversity and think society benefits when people can openly share their thoughts and experiences. The Salt Lake school board’s decision does not represent the feelings of the Mormon population in general.

BEN JARVIS

Long Beach

* Former President Jimmy Carter’s “It’s Fundamentally Christian to Reject Politics of Hate” (Commentary, Feb. 23) makes me regret campaigning against him in 1980. I was a 13-year-old immersed in the fundamentalism that now dominates the Southeastern U.S. Since joining the military, I have been stationed around the world and have met many people of different religions. I have learned that the condemning attitude I learned from my fundamentalist leaders is “un-Christian” and antithetical to the real message of Christ.

President Carter reminds us the message of Christ was love and life; if Carter had been reelected, his administration would undoubtedly have been more vigorous, compassionate and “Christ-like” in its response to the AIDS epidemic.

RICHARD W. MERRITT

San Clemente

* A strange piece of reasoning by Carter, former president and self-described conservative Baptist, about “hating” homosexuals not being a worthy way of becoming president of the U.S.

It is the sin that is hated, not the sinner. There is an enormous difference. Jesus cured lepers and forgave sinners, as Carter says, but he required faith and repentance first, and then bade them sin no more.

It is not Pat Buchanan or some other conservative Republican presidential aspirant who is divisive, extreme or demagogic. It is those who espouse the sordid homosexual agenda (“marriage,” “rights,” the whole gamut of social and legal fiat) who are, because for the first time in Western civilization what has always been held to be a perversion of human nature and contrary to the divine will is inexplicably being codified in law and mores as a human “right.”

G.V. CLIMACO

Brea