homosexuality – Page 2 – Memphis Flyer

The MLGW Cover

Getting to the supermarket, DVD store, or Peanut Shoppe to get my copy of the Flyer is a weekly priority. Seeing the cover of the March 8th issue? Priceless!

S.G. Long

Memphis

Edmund Ford

City councilman Edmund Ford, awaiting trial on numerous charges brought forth by the FBI — not to mention his MLGW problems — berated every city councilperson and the media in a committee meeting two weeks ago (“Power Play,” March 8th issue). He pointed fingers and threatened some by name. And like a kennel of whipped puppies, they were laid to rest by the “undertaker.”

Ford says the MLGW charges are false and the bills are not entirely his. So what is the connection between Willie Herenton, Joe Lee, and Edmund Ford? Try this on for size: When Herenton nominated Lee to be president of MLGW, Ford praised him for his choice. And why shouldn’t he? According to his own statements, Ford is the one who married Joe Lee to his wife Mona!

Joe Mercer

Memphis

Let Them Eat a Stadium?

In 1789, a crowd of poor women marched into the Palace of Versailles and tried to petition their king for a fairer form of government. They were shouting that they had no bread and were hungry. To this, Marie Antoinette famously replied: “Let them eat cake.”

This is similar to the issue of a new football stadium raised by Mayor Herenton. Instead of educating our children or hiring enough probation officers to monitor sex offenders or dealing with our many other problems, we are told to “eat cake,” in the form of a new football stadium.

Frank M. Boone

Memphis

General Pace

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Peter Pace recently offered his opinion that homosexuality was “immoral.” I would first like to thank him for at least being honest and clear about his beliefs. However, I am one of the millions of “immoral” individuals he has insulted. I will not try to explain the natural connections and the human emotions involved. It is said best in biblical terms: After God created the earth and looked at what he had done, he saw that it was good. He said nothing about perfect.

So let us no longer pass judgment on one another but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. You are okay; I am okay — which means we’re both okay.

Gregory Vassar

Memphis

Agrees With Blackburn

I have finally found something about which I agree with my congresswoman. Representative Marsha Blackburn is right on when she targets banks that issue credit cards to those who are in our country illegally. This is a serious example of American business interests being put above our national security.

I encourage Congress to adopt Blackburn’s idea and make it the law of the land. I also encourage Blackburn to review her support for all those bank and credit-card fees and the sky-high interest rates banks have been allowed to charge.

Only the payday loan companies are allowed to charge higher rates, and they have been like sharks in targeting our stressed military families. The last Congress passed some relief but not enough to provide help to those who are sacrificing the most.

Jack Bishop

Cordova

Playhouse Kudos

I’m a young actor, and I made my first trip to Memphis for the Southeast Theatre Conference auditions. Playhouse on the Square was the host, and I had the chance to see its production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Whatever that theater is doing, it is doing right! The actors were top-notch, and the production values exquisite. Who needs to pay the prices of Broadway, when great theater is happening right there in Memphis!

Charles Milton

Watertown, Massachusetts

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Uncle Don this week. He was born in the 1920s, served honorably in World War II, then came back to civilian life and became a succesful pediatric dentist in St. Louis.

He lived a long and prosperous life, almost 30 years of it in the same elegant bluff-top home with his “roommate” Richard. When Richard died in the 1990s, Don started drinking too much. He died a few years later, sick and depressed, in a VA hospital in our small Missouri hometown.

He was a sophisticated man — a concert pianist in his spare time and an inveterate traveler. His presents were always fascinating, and the best thing I unwrapped most Christmases was usually something from his travels.

As was the custom with his generation (and with my Midwestern family), Don’s sexuality was never acknowledged. His brother (my father) often would say, “I wish Don would find a nice woman and settle down.”

By the time I was 16, I knew the score. And I’ve never figured out if my father was really clueless or just trying to protect me from the truth. I didn’t care. Don was cool.

I took my college girlfriends to St. Louis to stay at his groovy “bachelor pad.” He and Richard hosted dinner parties for us with artists and professors and bohemian types. I loved him. He was a wonderful uncle and a good man.

That’s why it infuriates me to hear the hypocrisy that came out of General Peter Pace’s mouth last week. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff called homosexuality “immoral,” adding: “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral.”

This guy is the military equivalent of my father — clueless or ignoring the obvious. Recent estimates put the number of gays serving in the U.S. military at around 65,000. Imagine if all those “immoral” folks decided to “tell,” without being “asked.”

What is immoral is asking people to fight and die for this country without letting them be who they truly are.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com