Liberal 'progress' is just the opposite

Recently, I viewed a Georgia Public Television program promoting homosexuality.

I flashbacked to programs for legalizing marijuana. In fuzzy '50s film clips, they portrayed conservatives as obsolete as black and white television, square as their thick framed glasses and narrow as their ties. They showed liberals well-focused as colorful, courageous veterans of persecution telling their own stories -- style promoting substance.

I also remembered a John Stossel program about three teenagers using marijuana. The smart kid was fine; marijuana relaxed his busy mind. The average kid became distracted; his grades went down. The weak kid became an addict; his grades plummeted.

My point? The strong will kiss another girl, like it, and profit off a song about it. The mediocre will buy the song -- and its acceptance of human degradation. But the weak will be all knotted up inside a Boy Scout tent.

Liberal propaganda programs are as clumsy and dangerous experiments in social engineering as the shock treatment employed by the squares to repair homosexuals. Liberals promoted drug culture, helped dealers access our children and have thousands of strung-out addicts to show for it. What they call progress is really regress -- and further back than the '50s.

BRIAN HALE, Red Bank

Patten Towers neglect puts shame on city

Chattanooga should be ashamed about the Patten Towers and the condition of the building. That building failed fire codes 10 years ago. Where was the Chattanooga fire inspector? Were it not for the residents being poor and indigent, the city would have already enforced safe and sanitary conditions. Remember when the HVAC was down for weeks, causing deplorable conditions? How about when the elevators were out of service for days?

These conditions represent your tax dollars in action. Why haven't the feds stepped in and said enough is enough? They stick their nose in everything else! Why hasn't our community stepped up to help these people? We spend more on trash cans for Riverbend than helping them.

As for the trash-mouth who sang -- or should I say ranted --vulgarities at Riverbend, there are a few people in this city who have a right to attend public events free of verbal pollution. If you don't like being treated poorly, stop purchasing expensive pins, and let this event define Chattanooga by what it will become -- trash for trash.

MARY LOU VAUGHT, Hixson

Editorial ignores complexity of issue

Times opinion page editor Pam Sohn's thoughts on "Churches and Boy Scouts" (June 14) were ill-considered on at least two levels.

First, the Times Free Press interviewed local congregations on June 12; on June 14, this editorial berated them. How short-sighted! The next time TFP reporters phone seeking comment on a complex issue, perhaps they will hear "no comment." The TFP will then have no story, because rather than cultivating your valued community contacts, you will have repelled them. Here was a complex issue over which the Boy Scouts themselves spent months. Why couldn't your editorializing reflect this complexity close to home?

Second, the editorial implies that on gay rights, these churches compare unfavorably with restaurants and the general workplace. It hints at illegality. Absent is an awareness of the legal principle of separation of church and state, according to which churches, synagogues and other religious organizations are free to maintain principles distinct from those which may currently be in vogue in society. Churches, which maintain a position on this matter distinguishable from that of American society in general, are consciously marching to a different drumbeat. Their right to do so is unassailable.

KENNETH J. STEWART, Lookout Mountain, Ga.