Indie Memphis Film Fest
What a weekend. I just want to say to anyone who thought about going to Indie Memphis (“Meanwhile at Indie Memphis,” October 31st issue) but didn’t: You really missed a phenomenal event — from the Grifters to Meryl Streep to Craig Brewer to a slew of really cool films, documentaries, and shorts. Just an awesome, super-stimulating weekend all around. Congrats to everyone who made it happen. Can’t wait ’til next year.
B.C. Wilder
Memphis
Gay Marriage
How nice that the Flyer gives sympathetic coverage to two gay men who want to force their lifestyle on the rest of us by getting legally “married” (The Fly-by, October 31st issue). God made it very clear in the Bible that homosexual activities are an abomination in his eyes. The bottom line is that gay marriage formalizes and legalizes behavior that is immoral.
Charles Fuller
Memphis
Bruce VanWyngarden’s column on gay marriage (Letter from the Editor, October 31st issue) makes it clear how history is on the side of those who want to eliminate these stupid and unenlightened state gay-marriage bans. These laws were enacted during the last surge of power from the tea partying GOP. Those days are about to be gone, along with the 19th-century thinking that accompanied them. The forces of social acceptance and legal action will ultimately prove to be a winning combination, even here in the “buy bull belt.”
Hell, even the Supreme Court is on our side. Put that in your “pipe” and smoke it, Lindsey Graham.
David Jefferson
Memphis
Second Civil War
No shots have been fired. No blood has been spilled. But a second Civil War is under way with a new breed of angry white rebels taking up where the old Confederacy left off (Letters to the Editor, October 31st issue).
The Tea Party soldiers of this New Confederacy have seized control of the Republican Party and flexed their muscles by trying to shut down the U.S. government. The same anti-union spirit that flourished in 1860 drives the Tea Party movement, which sees itself as resisting the tyranny of an illegitimate Northern president. In 1860, it was the end of states’ rights that the rebel states feared; today, it’s universal access to health care. Let’s call this hysteria what it is — racism. It is no coincidence that 10 of the 11 states of the Old South, including Tennessee, have refused to expand Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act; as a result of that decision, the majority of the people who will suffer are poor, black, and working-class.
Welcome to the new normal. These rebels without a cause see President Obama as a Pied Piper of leeches out to strip Tea Party whites of their wealth and privilege and redistribute the spoils to undeserving dark-skinned people. Aren’t you glad you don’t think this way. Or do you?
Ron Lowe
Nevada City, California
Scared Meatless
I wasn’t scared of all the witches, zombies, and assorted goblins wandering about on Halloween. What really scares me is the meat industry.
This is the industry that mutilates, cages, and butchers billions of cows, pigs, and other sentient animals; feeds carcasses of cats and dogs killed in pounds to chickens; exposes undocumented workers to chronic workplace injuries at slave wages; exploits farmers and ranchers by dictating wholesale market prices; punishes documentation of its abuses through unconstitutional “ag-gag” laws; promotes world hunger by feeding nutritious corn and soybeans to animals; generates more greenhouse gases than any other human activity; generates more water pollution than any other human activity; creates deadly antibiotic-resistant pathogens by feeding antibiotics to animals.
Now, that’s really scary. And this is why I dropped animal products from my menu.
Morris Furman
Memphis
