Opinion Letters
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More creative stadium use
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Published: June 29, 2009
With the baseball stadium, we are now paying for a large amphitheater with seats, parking and a central location easily accessible to the entire community. The likelihood that the place will ever pay for itself with 4,000 spectators per game may, however, be a bit of a stretch.
Why not be a little more creative about its use, maybe even spend a tad more and outfit it with a removable band shell and performing arts stage which could be used when "Play ball!" is not on the schedule? Let Winston-Salem Symphony music director Robert Moody create outdoor summer concerts there; let Piedmont Opera perform a summer musical series with such delights as South Pacific or The Student Prince; maybe create a venue for some of our talented jazz musicians and singers to be heard and seen. Or perhaps a serenade of Mariachi music from our Hispanic community could celebrate Cinco de Mayo with us.
Maybe we could be a city with a delightful baseball season and a city of the arts that has its own outdoor performance arena. And maybe, just maybe, enough people would come that it would pay for itself as well as becoming a community asset instead of a mud hole or a financial drain on the city.
BRENDA QUINN HUTCHINS
Winston-Salem
Blanket condemnation
Whether the Christians who blanket all gay people as sinful and living "abberant lifestyles" are being hateful or just angry and disgusted, as the June 20 letter "Anger or disgust, not hate" says, is not my call to make.
In the general population, the debate in the Christian church about homosexuality is less an examination of the scant eight biblical texts in question than a force of socio-political culture. Most Christians have been told somewhere or sometime that the Bible condemns all homosexual relationships. That view is not holding up.
Christians and others who are turning to a study of those eight texts in their historical and literal contexts are finding no biblical grounds for blanket condemnation of all homosexual relationships. It is exploitative sex that is condemned. Of any kind. That's one of the real consistencies in the Bible.
I do not know if the letter writer may be experiencing discomfort when voices speak up against misguided blanket condemnations. What I do know is that loud, zealous condemnations of whole groups of people often fuel murderous acts.
The book Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, by evangelical minister Jack Rogers, presents an examination of the texts in question, the traditions of biblical interpretations and the patterns of misusing the Bible to justify oppressions of numerous kinds. Rogers was elected moderator of the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2001.
JANET JOYNER
Winston-Salem
Isn't this backward?
In reference to "Sex-ed bill gets moved forward" (June 24), in this bill, parents who do not want their teens to be taught the comprehensive sex-education curriculum can put in writing that they are not to be taught this alternate concept. Isn't this backward?
When my children go on a field trip, or participate in a special program, they must have a parent's signed permission -- not sign if they do not want them to attend. Is this bill intended to snare the parents who are not informed, or parents who might forget the deadline for signing their students out of this particular study? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
I smell something in Denmark!
PATRICIA SLAGA
Winston-Salem
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