Gay Marriage
I was confused by Tommy Volinchak’s response (Letters, September 5th issue) to Bianca Phillips’ wonderful and thoughtful article on gay marriage (“Nice Day for a Gay Wedding,” August 29th issue).
Volinchak sees the Flyer as a “beacon of moral decay”? So why is he reading it? Then he rambles on to say he has “plenty of friends who are gay” and is “not offended in any way by the gay lifestyle.”
So why did he waste his time writing and sending a letter bubbling with such venom and small-mindedness? He needs more gay friends, I believe, for there are many things about life and love he must learn about.
The only “off-the-scale goofy” concept I noticed was his lame attempts at justifying his juvenile attitude. I hope that it, too, wasn’t “pre-engineered by God.”
Philip Scott
Memphis
Twerked
I was absolutely appalled that the Flyer ran that disgusting, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, rape apologist “Twerk It” viewpoint from Richard Cohen (September 5th issue). Beyond the fact that it was terribly written, it was also dangerously factually inaccurate regarding the details of the Steubenville rape case. The victim was not just “manhandled” and videotaped naked. She was digitally and orally penetrated while unconscious and without her consent, not that the specific method by which she was raped should even matter in how heinous a crime it was. If you want to send a message to teenagers about how their culture has “run amok,” don’t further blur the lines on what is criminally considered sexual assault by implying it’s just bad manners or blaming it on Miley Cyrus and pop culture.
Furthermore, Cohen, who was himself guilty of creating a “hostile work environment” for a young female co-worker at The Washington Post, is about as qualified to comment on the women’s movement as Rick Perry or Todd Akin or any other crotchety old white guy who opens his mouth and lets rape culture commentary like this come out of it.
If you were looking for well-written opinion pieces about rape culture or the women’s movement, perhaps you should consider following the lead of other news sources, which are publishing local and national female writers such as Zerlina Maxwell or Shelby County Schools new chief communications officer Emily Yellin.
I have lost all respect for the Flyer for publishing this crap, and you have lost a loyal reader.
Chloe O’Hearn
Memphis
Yeehaw!
Yeehaw! The good ol’ boys and girls of the U.S. military are about to unleash a fresh wave of shock, awe, destruction, murder, and mayhem against another Arab state, with the same old excuse as last time: They used “weapons of mass destruction.”
The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of weapons of mass destruction. And there are dozens of recalcitrant countries that need a hail of our missiles flung at them, keeping our munitions factories and supply lines churning.
I say let’s throw our weight around a little more, and after enough bombs and missiles have been fired, we can leave Syria like we did Iraq — in a state of constant civil war. While we’re at it, we should go ahead and bomb the crap out of Iran. They’re next, anyway.
Edward Norman
Memphis
Yeehaw!!
Yeehaw, the government has finally done something really cool. The Justice Department has decided not to go after the states that legalize pot.
This doesn’t go far enough. I think Congress needs to pass the bong prior to all voting procedures. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, everybody I knew, except my parents and people at my church, smoked pot. If you had negative feelings for someone or just didn’t like them, you could smoke pot with said unpleasant person and before long, you’d be fast friends. I do not know why this worked, but I promise it did.
I bet that if all the Republicans and Democrats could adjust their attitudes before voting on bills, this would be a much more congenial country.
Dagmar Bergan
Helena, Arkansas
