Two recent items on the Opinion page caught my attention.
The first was on June 21, a column from Susan Paslov, who indicated that, contrary to the statement that "Guns do not kill. People kill"; guns kill.
I have never heard of a prosecutor bringing a gun to trial for murder, justifiable homicide or any other crime. Contrarily, I have heard, more than I care to hear, of the large number of human killers prosecuted and imprisoned for killing;, regardless of the instrument each used.
May I submit that if guns are the killers, why are we building so many prisons to house humans when a fraction of that number of buildings could hold, literally, millions of guns responsible for all the deaths?
The second was a letter on June 25 from Shirley Swafford, who accused the 121,499 people who signed the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage petition, of which I am one signator, of spreading hatred of people.
As long as Ms. Swafford took the time to look up the definition of bigot, it would have behooved her to also look up the meaning of marriage which, according to Webster, means: the legal union of husband and wife; the ceremony, civil or religious, by which two people of opposite sex become husband and wife. The operative word here is "opposite"; It states nothing about two people of the same gender. In fact, the only reason marriage exists is because God, in His infinite wisdom, instituted the union of a man and a woman to be the facilitators through which He brings forth life. Since two people of the same sex cannot procreate, it is a logical deduction that God did not intend them to marry nor accrue to themselves any of the prerogatives thereof.
So, when we teach our children this meaning of marriage we are teaching them the truth about both God's moral and natural laws.
As for loving one's neighbor: To tell our neighbor it's OK to break God's moral or natural laws constitutes a lie. Love does not lie! Our neighbor may not like what he/she hears when we speak this truth, but God does! And that's what counts!
MARY SANTOMAURO
Carson City