Published: April 19, 2008 10:52 pm            

Intolerance is toxic to healthy communities

To the Editor:

This letter regards “Defending family values and Rep. Sally Kern,” by Rep. Jason Murphey in the April 7 Edmond Sun.

When did intolerance and discrimination become family values? When did someone’s interpretation of a biblical sentence become the truth and the law?

In regard to the threat posed by public libraries — most individuals with tolerant minds can discern the difference between the provision of education and information and an endorsement. The phone company provides information, but no one believes those listings constitute an endorsement of services by the phone company. Since when is knowledge a grave threat?

Regarding the breakdown of families, if Kern and Murphey are looking for someone to blame for children not being raised in stable households, it may be more productive to look to the heterosexual parents of those children for answers.

There are thousands of people in my community; many of whom are my friends; many of whom have an alternative sexual preference; many have been in my home and interacted with my children, spouse, parents, sister, nieces, aunts, uncles and other relatives. It’s been more than 40 years of contact without our family being extinguished as predicted by Murphey and Kern.

The Human Services Committee should have a detailed understanding of the reasons that 19,000 children born in traditional heterosexual families, or of heterosexual adults, are now in state custody, and I seriously doubt that library books or gay people appear on the list.

Regarding the challenges of the Corrections Committee — am I to believe that only gay or lesbian people sell and use drugs; that only gay and lesbian people sell and use guns; that only gay and lesbian people rob banks; that because a neighbor, friend or co-worker is gay you can expect to be influenced to break the law and/or destroy your family?

Kern has come under attack not for suggesting that the breakdown of family values poses a grave threat to our society, but for suggesting that the breakdown of family values can be blamed on a “homosexual agenda.”

Call me and my family non-traditional, but our family values are acceptance, tolerance, love, support and nurturance. Being judgmental and intolerant are toxic to healthy individuals, families and communities. There should be no joy in promoting stigma and injustice through the degradation of others. It is not righteous. Perhaps those beliefs and behaviors are the real threats to our family values.

Maybe we should attempt to look inside others and not just decide their worth by outward appearances or gestures. I’m quite sure that many Klansmen also were soft-spoken and kind when the hood was off.



Karen Orsi

Edmond

        

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