The Eagle-Tribune
---- — Let’s get going on casinos
To the editor:
I read the story “Casino debate is heated” (Feb. 20) and I just couldn’t hold back any longer. Once again what should be a common-sense answer is not so common.
First, let me point out a few things. There was once a time when gay marriage was unheard of but is now commonplace. Marijuana is becoming accepted as people’s choice and I’ll bet in not too long it will be legal in most states.
It’s time to snap out of it on this gambling issue. Rockingham Park is the perfect place for a casino in New Hampshire, unless you think we need another mall. I think a lot of folks who are against the casinos are only looking at the act of gambling and not the other things it can bring. There will be restaurants and venues for entertainment with shows and concerts, and how about some jobs? If you don’t want to gamble then don’t, you can just enjoy the shows without having to go to Boston and leave the people alone who like that kind of stuff. Try a little of New Hampshire’s “Live Free” motto. And please stop with the “there’s going to be more crime” stuff. The world isn’t going to come to an end.
Look at all the land that has sat in a useless state not paying any of its tax potential for all these years. Massachusetts is going to have casinos so where do you think people who enjoy this stuff will go to spend their money? Why not keep it right here in New Hampshire?
I read that the chiefs of police are in opposition to the casinos. Well, that’s too bad. Sure it’s going to be a big job and lots of changes but if they can’t handle the job maybe it’s time to bring in others who have experience with this stuff rather than curling up in a ball and crying about it.
The times they are a-changing and we voted for a governor who is for the casinos. If the people want them, then finally, after fighting it for 20-something years, it’s time to say let’s get it on.
Dennis Croteau
Salem
On the church and gay marriage
To the editor:
Regarding the column “Church is a force for moderation,” by Arthur I. Cyr.
Every culture and society on the planet that we know of, both from the past as well from our own time, did not recognize same-marriage until some began to do so about 20 years ago. So saying that the Catholic Church’s outlook in this regard has somehow maintained a “medieval” outlook is flat-out mistaken. Even the most gay-friendly societies didn’t recognize, or even consider the possibility of, same-sex marriage.
Thus, the Catholic Church has merely been defending the universal stance of humanity on the subject, but of course it has done so under the guise of defending God’s will — although, obviously, the unanimity of humanity on any subject seems the greatest possible evidence of God’s will.
I’m an atheist, so I am not defending my church. Instead, I defend the truth against ignorance.
Mr. Cyr also seems to miss the fact that our concern for equality for gay people and for extending the benefits of marriage to them grew historically directly out of the central place of both compassion and equality in the message of Christ and St. Paul, the founders of Christianity, and of both Christianity and Roman Catholicism itself.
We learned our compassion and our obsessions with equality at Jesus’ feet, as it were, even if our compassion and our obsession for equality have now turned — sharper than a serpent’s tooth — on other teachings of Judaism and Christianity and in particular undermine some of the our fundamental ideas of sin itself.
Christianity teaches that we are all sinners, although not all of us in the same manner. My lusts may not be your lusts, my vanities may not be yours, my lies are surely not your lies, but we all lust, we are all vain, and we all lie, after all.
Christ taught that we should forgive one another in the hope that God will forgive us, in the belief that He will be compassionate to us to the same degree, or better still, in His mercy, in the same spirit, that we are compassionate to others.
Christ didn’t deny the existence of sin, of course. But to our modern, equality-obsessed and pity-haunted minds, gay people can’t help but be what they are, and so by a kind of transubstantiation the sinner sanctifies the sin so much so that it is sin no more.
We also consubstantiate our pity into anger at the people and institutions that claim that practicing homosexuals are sinners because we believe that pity is hateful and degrading to its object.
Nietzsche would have a field day psychologically vivisecting us, although, great seer that he was, of course, he did most of it without ever actually seeing us.
Michael Christian
Haverhill
Love is the greatest creation
To the editor:
Many times, during our lives, we learn of the creation of many things by people, who become well known in the world.
Some people have been outstanding in the sports world, and some people have become well known in the political world.
However, the ultimate of creation is the Creator of Love.
Our Heavenly Father God is the creator of the greatest gift — our Heavenly Father is the Creator of Love, which is the ultimate of creation.
All love and praise to our Creator God.
Thomas McCarthy
Methuen
