Letters

Published: Thursday, February 29, 1996

Letters

Heaven defines love

Editor:

Sherry Hartel's column on the importance of spirituality in relationships ("Marriage: match made in heaven?," Feb. 23) touches upon many vital points, but neglects others.

I think Hartel hits the mark when she says that religious values are an important consideration in choosing with whom to have a committed relationship.

However, Hartel ends the column in a confusing way. She claims that her relationship with her atheist boyfriend is "heavenly;" yet she says that it is not "ideal" since they do not connect on a spiritual level. Hartel also mentions that it was after a frustrating two-hour phone call that she resolved her conflict. It rather sounds like she swept the problems under the carpet when she explains that "it is not up to me to question."

I agree with Hartel's belief that religion is about "love, peace and happiness on earth," but it is also about love, peace and happiness in the afterlife. Religion, moreover, is also about justice and truth, qualities which Hartel seems willing to compromise in order to maintain her "heavenly" relationship.

As a fellow Christian, I would remind Hartel that God is not only love (1 John 4:8), but also truth (John 14:6). To separate the divine attributes is to see God as a collection of qualities, rather than as a person.

Lastly, I agree with Hartel's final comment that to "put an otherwise heavenly relationship in jeopardy would be the biggest mistake of (her) life." I just differ with her on which is the truly "heavenly" relationship.

Anthony Garcias

Fourth-year

Latin and philosophy

Abortion insert slanted

Editor:

My first response was to merely shake my head in disgust. Then I opened it, and I shuddered. And now having read it, I'm writing a response to the propaganda that the Daily Bruin published in a blatant act of prostitution.

In fact, I have more respect for women and men that sell themselves for money than for a publication that should assume some kind of responsibility for the integrity of the news that it produces, and instead chooses to cater to a select few in favor of the money that it is fed.

The pro-life magazine that was inserted so strategically inside the fold does not keep the responsibility away from the newspaper. The decision to include this pro-life stance in The Bruin was made, and having been made, should have been included within the paper. The not-so-subtle disclaimer which only appeared outside the main body of The Bruin is as cowardly as the appearance of the anti-abortion insert itself.

This advertisement insert was invasive and untrue. The information that it contains is slanted in favor of the author's and editor's beliefs. The information that it withholds piles the claim of irresponsible journalism on the shoulders of The Bruin. Why are all of the women pictured in favor of adoption white? Could it possibly be because the beds of orphanages and state agencies are overrun with minority babies who cannot be adopted by the white families that so "need" a child?

Women of color have a great number of abortions, and yet they are the ones that these same people point to as straining our economy with a great number of babies. How can they have it both ways? Should only socially acceptable minorities be allowed to keep their babies and give them up for adoption because theirs are the only babies that will be adopted?

What of the fact that every mention of a child within the pamphlet was of a female child? Don't boys get aborted? Do the producers of that insert think that it's acceptable to abort male babies but not female babies? Or is this just another strategy of yellow journalism that slants itself in an attempt to manipulate readers?

The Bruin must be the voice of the students; if it can't be that it should cease to exist.

The ground cover that this pamphlet became as it was thrown from The Bruin and littered across nearly every open space on campus shows the sentiment of students. We don't want to be submitted to this close-minded dribble. If someone wants to show an argument for both sides and tell me why adoption and birth is definitively better than abortion, then I will be proud to listen.

There was absolutely no mention of why abortion was legalized to begin with. Many women laying in pools of their own blood with rusty hangers springing from their birth canals is what I think of when I think of "pro-life."

When our society has become ideal and no stigma is placed on young girls that carry their babies to full term; when drug addicts stop having drug babies that will always carry the sins of their parents; when rape has stopped, then we can make abortion illegal again, but by then, we won't have to.

T. Nicole Caldwell

Fourth-year

English

Misconceiving Zionism

Editor:

Thanks to the Daily Bruin for the first article in a series on modern Israel. I would, however, like to set the record straight on a few issues ("The unity of the old and the new," Jan. 26).

First, many Zionists were (and are) secular. Indeed, Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern, political Zionism, had little religious training; his secular upbringing was a major obstacle to earning the support of the messianic religious masses.

Similarly, many of the strongest voices in the early Zionist movement were motivated by secular thinking, specifically, Western notions of the nation-state. Most of their funding came from assimilated, capitalist Jews and socialist intellectuals. The religious masses of the East were far too poverty-stricken, and far too concerned with day-to-day survival, to be of much immediate use to the Zionist cause.

Indeed, if any religious body is ultimately responsible for the Zionist movement, it is Christianity, for it was (and is) in the name of Christianity that so many atrocities have been committed against the Jews. This persecution, of course, culminated in the German genocidal war against the Jews some half-century ago.

Zionism also says little about who has the ultimate right to the disputed land. To his great detriment, Herzl all but ignored the native Arab population of Palestine. Ahad Ha'am, however, the father of so-called "spiritual Zionism," strongly cautioned against disrupting the lives of the native population.

While running the risk of being misinterpreted as a defender of Israel's racial policies, I note that most governments practice a racism far more severe than Israel's. For example: Japan, China, Iraq, Mexico and Russia. The United Nations has never considered (let alone passed) declarations of the form "Japanism, Sinism, Iraqism ... is racism."

The fact that the United Nations has since rescinded its "Zionism is racism" resolution, then, is as meaningless as the resolution itself.

Daniel Silverman

Department of surgery

Loving one's fetus

Editor:

The universal law is to love one's neighbor as one's self. But America is suffering for its failures to heed this law.

Legal abortion has ruptured the ties that bind us, delivering the message that human lives have value only when wanted by those more powerful. This has deepened the alienation, anger, rebellion and hopelessness that feed crime and other social ills.

"Every child a wanted child" has made every child a conditional child to immature parents, contributing greatly to postnatal child abuse (contrary to popular myth, abused children were wanted - for the wrong reasons - more often than those not abused).

Abortion's easy availability has exposed women and young girls to increased sexual exploitation and subsequent coercion to use this deadly cover-up. It has been disastrous to the physical, emotional and spiritual health of women. A more powerful vehicle for the abuse, subjugation and suffering of women could hardly be imagined.

Human history is littered with failed attempts to mistreat others without consequences. How much must it cost us before we concede that the universal law is as real and immutable as the laws of physics?

Alfred Lemmo

Dearborn, Mich.

The Middle East

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