Letters to the editor May 9
Southern border response
Yesterday I observed a 5 or 6-year-old girl in the park with her mother and little sister. Joy and wonder lit up her features. When I woke this morning I thought about this little girl. Children deserve a chance to be children and keep their innocence.
My mind started sorting through recent statistics about our southern border. Up to 30% of women and children (mostly girls) are raped or sexually assaulted on the trek to the border. Is this not a hair on fire crisis? Exploited women and children are reason enough to put a stop the multitudes rushing our border night and day. Children are losing their innocence, the trauma they suffer is a life-long burden they will always carry.
It is appalling to me that Vice President Kamala Harris was put in charge of the situation at the border but will not go to the southern border. Kamala will jet set to the nations the migrants are coming from to speak to the leaders in June.
Kamala where is your compassion? When will you respond to this emergency? The border agents know how this can be stopped or greatly reduced but they are being ignored. They say finish the wall, continue the wait in Mexico policy, and stop catch and release. This will put the fire out.
—Marsha Graham, Kalispell
Church and state
In response to Mark Agather’s May 2 letter to the editor “Two worldviews” I can tell you personally that secular humanists don’t care what flavor of religion you are, nor do we care to interfere with your right to worship as you see fit. We only ask that you don’t legislate based on religion, and unless you want to hold a religious studies course in a public school to discuss the origins of all religions, do not teach it in the public classroom as anything close to fact.
There are plenty of private schools that choose to incorporate religion in their curriculum, pick one of those for your kids.
God only knows (pun intended) where Agather gets his information, but evolution is a fact, so much so that science has moved on. What do you think viruses such as Covid -19 are? Evolution on steroids. No one has been able to disprove evolution by natural selection, although unlike religion, science is always open to being disproven, or improved upon as is the case in many instances.
SHs also have varying political and social beliefs, and to try and paint SHs into some type of easily explained political/social philosophy is ridiculous. Separation of church and state, that’s pretty much all we ask.
—Jonathan Sims, Lakeside