Double standard
Quite interesting, the North Carolina Republican Party is airing attack ads on two Democrats who are running for office because they support Barack Obama, who went to Reverend Wright's church. Apparently, Wright's sermons saying that God condemns America for its acts and punished America in the 9/11 attacks are very radical.
Does anyone recall the same outrage when Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, talked about 9/11? He stated: "Americans have allowed rampant secularism, the occult, permitted abortions, and legislated prayer out of our schools. So God Almighty is lifting his protection from us." The acceptance of homosexuality, Robertson says, could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist’s bombs, and possibly a meteor striking the earth.
Please remind me if the Republican Party made a similar outcry about Jerry Falwell. “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, ... the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this [terrorist attack] happen.'"
Jerry Falwell also said that AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.
In fairness to the above preachers, they based their points of view on an early prophetic worldview which explains suffering as punishment for sin. Since all three are using same prophetic world view, why is only Rev. Wright being attacked by the Republicans? Why hasn’t the media gone after Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell like it has about Reverend Wright?
Of course, we can explain the attack ads by the North Carolina Republican Party by the mastermind of wedge issues, Karl Rove, an agnostic, who has successfully used divisive issue to motivate the Christian conservatives to vote for their candidate. Perhaps the Republican Party uses a double standard!
Ronald Marshall • Petoskey
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Public health officials in Lansing have heard next to nothing of Lyme disease in Northwest Michigan, but the area is abuzz with stories of people battling the disease.
Lyme disease is truly nasty, confusing and complicated. And the politics surrounding this tick-borne disease are pretty much the same way. In fact, the intense medical controversy has kept state officials in the dark about proven cases in the area.
Dawn Brown, whose face flashed with pain through a recent interview, believes a tick at the Lake Ann Baptist Camp burrowed into her leg on a sunny day last May. An avid walker/runner and mother of three, she paid little attention to the scab on her leg while shaving over the weekend.
But three days later she felt as if a Mack truck had hit her.
“I was fine in the morning, I did all my errands, got the kids to school. By noon I was on the couch and couldn’t move. I called my husband and he sat on the couch, and I screamed in pain. Just him sitting on the couch made me hurt.”
Her temperature climbed to 102. She sweated and shivered with chills. Over the next three weeks, her knees, ankles, wrists and elbows puffed up. Pain jumped from one joint to another. Unable to get a definitive diagnosis from area physicians, she surfed the Internet and found the Michigan Lyme Disease Association. She had all the symptoms of Lyme. Out of curiosity, she sent a note out to the neighborhood. Had anyone else been bit?
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