To the editor:
I sit here reading letters to the editor from recent weeks, as well as most of the last year, and some are filled with anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-female, anti-modern family, puritanical thought and nationalist fascism.
Attributed to the name of a singularly loving moral God, they call for people to be hated. Aren't the Christ-like communities meant by "divine" description to have open doors to everyone without judgment? The writers have taken 10 basic moral commandments and turned them into a manifesto of hate.
Ancient words are twisted to validate modern fallacies and fears. Where in the dusty pages of your theological guidebook, do writers find this hate tucked in? Wasn't it the savior who strived to give attention, love, affirmation and acceptance to the disenfranchised, downtrodden communities that he visited, inhabited and served? The writers devalue them because they cannot conceptualize how someone else can live differently than they do. The teachings of their own church can't seem to make them understand compassion or human dignity. It must be hard to carry all those stones in your pockets.
I'm reminded when I hear the testimony at our local library meetings from theological university militants and other conservatives who stand up as "good citizens," but who really have perverted the meaning of Christianity. The contradictory nature of their assault on adults in the LGBTQIA+ community, and children within this community disgusts me. Every week we see news stories of outrageous assault against children by leaders of Christian churches, "conservative" politicians and venerated members of the hetero normative ultra-American community.
Yet here these folks stand on a very flimsy soapbox trying to dictate morality to the masses in Jefferson County. We are citizens of the United States of America, and we're due some freedoms.
One of those is to be able to raise our children in a way that we see fit. No one in the world or the great beyond has any right to tell another parent what is a good moral story to share with their children. You see, morals are based on personal preferences, personal guiding lights that each family decides upon.
Whatever those beacons of truth might be, no one has the right to diminish that light or stop that flow of energy between a parent and child. The public library is meant, at its very basis, to provide information in an unbiased format to everyone who seeks it within those halls. If the idea of raising children is to take a theological approach and teach them whatever morals you feel will give them the best possible life, then, by all means, you should do that.
My moral code is not debatable outside of my own family unit, nor should yours be. I hope that the children of these future radical militant terrorizers don't experience the hell that they expect other people's children to endure. I stand for the staff of the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County -- knowledge is power, power belongs to the people.
Rosie Dennis
Dillonvale