Walking the Walk
Thank you for including me in “The Church’s New Colors” story (Cover Story, Nov. 18). It was one of the most thorough, honest, accurate and moving newspaper stories I have ever read in more than 30 years as a professional journalist. Your facts were well researched and dead on the mark. Your quotes were detailed and accurate, and the guts you showed tackling this sensitive topic with candor and professionalism was, in my view, deserving of top journalism awards!
Straight people and members of the GLBT community have been reading this story online across the nation and the world. My email inbox has been lighting up with reactions! Overwhelmingly, most have been brought to tears of joy, thankful for your reporting efforts and hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we as a nation, and as a church, can now focus on the basic value and gifts of all human beings, which has been sorely missing in many of the timely, heated and hurtful political issue debates about gays and lesbians.
While some may be challenged by your creative use of the pastor’s photo with the GLBT flag as a backdrop, many in the faith community see your initiative to combine the two as an inspiring step that Jesus himself might have taken. He wasn’t afraid to shake things up and knock down long-held barriers and taboos which have long since been proven to be far too simplistic in thinking or self-serving in approach. Society’s proclaimed outcasts or “sinners,” like the repressive Roman soldier centuries ago who turned to Jesus as a last resort when his son was dying, should find openness and creative will to accept and welcome all the Children of God.
Bravo for being open to taking the time to explore the life experiences of all people, especially those that people with money, power or comfort zones to protect like to judge and write off as losers or lost souls. Many of us know that Jesus used to dine with pre-judged individuals and told them “theirs was the kingdom of heaven.”
It never hurts for the media to remind all us, from time to time, whether we, in this free society, are really “walking the walk” that we like to showcase and talk.
Bob Rucker
SJSU Journalism & Diversity in Media professor
Dealer vs. Driver
Haven’t you figured it out yet? (“Big Brother,” Letters, Nov. 11). I have many friends that are in law enforcement and in no way am I being disrespectful. The police officers in California go after the drunk driver and leave the drug dealers and the people using drugs alone, Why?
If you arrest a drunk driver, he is usually employed and is somewhat stable. If you arrest this person, he will more than likely pay the fine, attend and pay for the classes and report as ordered by the judge—and usually continue to live life without crime. The drug dealer and the drug user, however, are a different story. Both are a menace to society; they steal, rob, break into homes, they are not stable, they continue to break the law and are usually out on the street before the officer can finish his report. If convicted, and most are, they become a liability to society and usually end up in prison where we as law-abiding citizens support this individual for a period of time until he is released and usually begins the cycle all over again.
Get it? Why go after the drug dealer and user when the drunk driver is more profitable.
Ron Keffer
San Jose
