Editor:

I would have a hard time ever reading the school newspaper again if someone didn’t condemn Andrew Kirk’s column (“The ‘gay agenda’ is real,” March 14), so I’ve decided to do it myself. For the sake of time I’ll focus on his last four paragraphs. His general conclusions were: 1. Old religious texts are reliable bases for public law, 2. Nazis thought they had reason on their side, and 3. The Bible (and other religious texts) is the moral and ethical backbone of our society.

If conclusion No. 1 is to be accepted then we must also accept cultures that use religious texts that support ideas that promote genocide, slavery, beating our wives, etc. Human rights will have to take a back seat to what some guy, a long time ago, said God told him.

In regard to conclusion No. 2, you should understand that on Nazi soldier belt buckles that phrase “Gott Mit Uns” (“God with us”) was inscribed. The Nazis were one of many groups that used God as an excuse to harm, kill or otherwise oppress a third party?a lot like what Kirk is doing.

And I’m afraid the word limit for this letter doesn’t permit me to reply to the third conclusion adequately. So, I’ll simply say that if you look at the history of our country, almost every push for greater equality and moral progress has been consistently opposed by the religious-that is, if you consider things like ending slavery and allowing women to vote moral progress. Some people don’t–mostly religious people who use the Bible to misconstrue ideas of gender roles and black people’s “place” in society as a result for their forefathers’ transgressions against God.

God, Zeus and the Flying Spaghetti Monster help us if anyone read Kirk’s column and said, “Wow, that guy made a lot of sense.”

Ryan WhaleySenior, Accounting