LETTER: Do you even believe in God?
Editor,
I feel that Mr. Smith’s 10/22 letter completely missed the point Mr. Delk was trying to make. Medical and pharmaceutical advances now allow individuals to safely engage in sexual intercourse without fear of contracting STDs, becoming pregnant or bringing an unwanted child into the world.
However, all too frequently do we see couples in this community getting married at very early ages so that their sexual desires may be fulfilled without ‘sinning’ by engaging in extra-marital sex.
How many unfortunate 20 to 25-year-old single Utah mothers do you see trying to raise children by themselves because the couple’s lustful jump into marriage and family ended up being premature, and like 45 percent of Utahns, they found weren’t compatible with the person they married right out of high school. Their children, along with those raised in other unhappy families that refuse to divorce for religious reasons, are the kids that truly suffer.
It is a shame that society places additional undue burden on children born out of wedlock by calling them illegal, and suggesting that their own ‘legitimate’ children are inherently a better class of human beings.
Concerning unintended pregnancies outside of marriage, honest education is the only thing needed to completely prevent them. In the very rare situations where condoms or diaphragms fail, emergency contraception is now available even in Utah, and it is perfectly safe, cheap and reliable. Those that claim to be ‘pro-life’ (I guess ‘life’ doesn’t apply to the thousands of women who died from botched back-alley clothes hanger abortions before Roe v. Wade) can rest easy, the day after conception absolutely no differentiation has occurred.
As former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has often said, “Too many people in this country have a love affair with the fetus but neglect a child after birth.”
The letter states that “since the beginning of time, God has instituted laws of chastity and only having sexual relations in the bonds of marriage.”
Throughout history many different concepts and notions of god(s) have existed, some were explicitly worshipped by participating in mass orgies and sexual debauchery.
The most popular rendition of god among USU students has promoted incest, secret ‘re-marriage’ of already married women (most would call this infidelity or adultery), the cultivation of large harems by powerful men, and breeding many more children than you are able to provide for; that’s all in the last 150 years. This god doesn’t seem very chaste to me.
The “real” world experience of even Cache Valley should have been enough to educate anyone that not all of us believe in the same god, or any omnipresent being at all. Please continue this discussion, but let’s focus on mutually agreed upon reality, namely the results of abstinence-only education on society and any alternatives, not commands from some mystical supreme being we don’t all believe even exists.
Jon May