Canine Mutiny

Kemper tantrum: Regarding Mark Kind's Kansas City Strip (June 13): Nice story. It goes to show you that the Kempers are no angels, like they seem to think. Couldn't they have talked to the dog owner about this instead of wanting to kill it?

As they are also trying to kill our area racetrack, they deserve the bad publicity. It lets people see how they really are.
Name Withheld Upon Request

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Bad Religion
Judge not: Regarding Deb Hipp's "Love Worn Out" (June 13): I loved Deb Hipp's article exposing the self-hatred being taught at a church that I have attended to see a Passion play. It's not being gay that makes these children "broken"; it's being told that God won't love them if they continue to be who they are that leaves them broken. I believe that if parents truly understood how damaging this message is, they would protect their children from it.

Many laws, rules and supposed opinions of God surround the Bible texts that reference homo behavior, and these rules often go unnoticed by the zealots. It's easy for a straight person to say that being gay is an abomination, but they lie, eat pork, use God's name in vain and have premarital sex every day. I consider myself lucky to still have faith in God and my Christian identity. Many gay people I know have turned away from God after being convinced by society or their own church that God doesn't love them. How terrible that shortsighted, self-important people can so easily rob people of something so vital to their spiritual survival.

If Jesus were here now, he would have been at the Gay Pride festival. Not lecturing or telling us we were forsaken. Just hanging out with us and letting us know we are loved. That is the example he always set.
Michael Jasper
Kansas City, Missouri

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End of debate:For a quarter of a century, all the major psychological organizations have affirmed that homosexuality is not a mental illness, beginning with the American Psychiatric Association's Board of Trustees' 1973 statement that "homosexuality does not meet the criteria to be considered a mental illness." There is no debate here. The other professional psychological organizations all agree -- the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

These organizations are also in agreement in opposing the radical religious right's so-called "therapies" and other scams meant to "convert, repair or cure" gay people to become heterosexual. They also agree that the use of these "cures" is psychologically harmful and unprofessional.

Maybe someday these conservative religious people will be able to give up their prejudices. But that will mean they'll have to humbly: 1) repent by taking personal responsibility for all the historical and present-day hurt, violence and destruction their rhetoric has fed and their actions have caused against human beings who are gay; 2) give up their antigay interpretations of the Bible for those of other Bible scholars they now criticize for disagreeing with them; 3) accept their own sexual orientations as God-given; 4) stop scapegoating gay people and take personal responsibility for their part in the problems that plague their families, their marriages, their children and society; and 5) forgo the attention and the lucrative funds raised by the scare tactics of the antigay industry for their leaders, counselors, ministers, causes and "ministries."
Robert N. Minor, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Kansas
Lawrence

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The Black Hole
Goth crock: Regarding Casey Logan's "Oh My Goth" (May 30): Once again the adults, politicians and government officials have totally found the root of the problem. In the '50s it was the rebels, in the '60s the hippies; the '70s had the disco freaks, the '80s had metal heads, the '90s belonged to the gangster-rap followers and now we find the goths. What a crock!

Most of us can agree that we all just want someplace to "fit in." If these kids have found that, kudos to them! I think the original intent of the youth organization was a pure one, but it has been corrupted by everyone else. Yes, it is good for people to understand diversity, find out more about groups we don't understand or relate to, but to target them as a high-risk group for anything is just plain naive. Violence, drugs and sex are not limited to any one group of people; we are all at risk of going over the edge.

Like toddlers who have just learned to walk, teens are simply testing their boundaries, as most teens have done before them. If there is a problem or high risk, we as society have created it by leaving the boundaries unclear. We have taught the kids of today that they can get away with just about anything because we don't really enforce all the crap we say. Sad, isn't it?
Name Withheld Upon Request

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Plot Thickens
Justin's case: I read two letters in the May 30 issue regarding Allie Johnson's "Cemetery Plot" (May 16), about the murder of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen. One was from the mother of the convicted killer, Byron Case, and another was from a friend of Case's family. I think the victim's family should now reply.