Spring Break
The 'Right Mindset' is a Jell-O Cook Off
Issue date: 4/8/05 Section: Editorial/Opinion
04/08/05 - To the Cigar,
After reading Nathaniel Nelson's rant in "Common Sense: The Right Mindset" (April 7), and alternately laughing and grimacing at its severe perversion of reason, factual record, and alas, of ethics and morality, I was overcome by a sense of shame that this person will soon be credentialed by URI and unleashed onto a credulous public, as well as nominated for distinction and awards while here - namely the Rainville award.
Okay, so I can live with denunciation of the "culture of death" (and Mr. Nelson cites favorably the recent pope, the absolutist reactionary John Paul II, who coined this summary judgment of secularism), the scary references to "evolution," even the entirely gratuitous linking of "Hitler" and "legality."
In fact, these are rather tired knee-jerkisms, rhetorical flourishes fanning the flames of fundamentalists and sundry evangels and stirring their passions.
But what caught my serious attention was a howler. Mr. Nelson writes: "While lobbying for AIDS prevention Americans continue to support the leading cause of AIDS - homosexuality. This support has become so strong, it has threatened to overtake history's most sacred institution - marriage."
Well, well, and well! Medical specialists, epidemiologists, public health workers, informed citizens and publics will not only tell Mr. Nelson that he's not only wrong on "the leading cause of AIDS [sic; HIV/AIDS is accurate]."
And to jump from ignorance about HIV/AIDS to the fantasy that creeping queerism threatens "to overtake history's most sacred institution-marriage," clearly marks Mr. Nelson twice over as an ignorant bigot.
The final call on what "history's" most divine "institution" - whatever that might be! - is no doubt still out. Many circumstances may be "overtaking" marriage - straight divorce comes to mind - but that's all that "culture of death" stuff, right up there with women's rights and the critical skills to identify really dumb ass thinking by boy-men.
If Mr. Nelson wants to educate himself in public - a formidable undertaking at a university where lots of folks are savvy about things like diseases and their transmissions, the differences between faith, folly, facts, and fun and something called critical thinking - then let's ask him to write an essay on HIV/AIDS in Africa and how the Bush administration and the Catholic Church, in their shared hostility to the use of condoms to help prevent the spread of this disease, are contributing to the unconscionable killing of hundreds of thousands of people (the vast majority of which are straight, and include wives who don't or cannot use condoms when sex is forced on them by their husbands).
John R. Leo
Professor of English & Film Studies
After reading Nathaniel Nelson's rant in "Common Sense: The Right Mindset" (April 7), and alternately laughing and grimacing at its severe perversion of reason, factual record, and alas, of ethics and morality, I was overcome by a sense of shame that this person will soon be credentialed by URI and unleashed onto a credulous public, as well as nominated for distinction and awards while here - namely the Rainville award.
Okay, so I can live with denunciation of the "culture of death" (and Mr. Nelson cites favorably the recent pope, the absolutist reactionary John Paul II, who coined this summary judgment of secularism), the scary references to "evolution," even the entirely gratuitous linking of "Hitler" and "legality."
In fact, these are rather tired knee-jerkisms, rhetorical flourishes fanning the flames of fundamentalists and sundry evangels and stirring their passions.
But what caught my serious attention was a howler. Mr. Nelson writes: "While lobbying for AIDS prevention Americans continue to support the leading cause of AIDS - homosexuality. This support has become so strong, it has threatened to overtake history's most sacred institution - marriage."
Well, well, and well! Medical specialists, epidemiologists, public health workers, informed citizens and publics will not only tell Mr. Nelson that he's not only wrong on "the leading cause of AIDS [sic; HIV/AIDS is accurate]."
And to jump from ignorance about HIV/AIDS to the fantasy that creeping queerism threatens "to overtake history's most sacred institution-marriage," clearly marks Mr. Nelson twice over as an ignorant bigot.
The final call on what "history's" most divine "institution" - whatever that might be! - is no doubt still out. Many circumstances may be "overtaking" marriage - straight divorce comes to mind - but that's all that "culture of death" stuff, right up there with women's rights and the critical skills to identify really dumb ass thinking by boy-men.
If Mr. Nelson wants to educate himself in public - a formidable undertaking at a university where lots of folks are savvy about things like diseases and their transmissions, the differences between faith, folly, facts, and fun and something called critical thinking - then let's ask him to write an essay on HIV/AIDS in Africa and how the Bush administration and the Catholic Church, in their shared hostility to the use of condoms to help prevent the spread of this disease, are contributing to the unconscionable killing of hundreds of thousands of people (the vast majority of which are straight, and include wives who don't or cannot use condoms when sex is forced on them by their husbands).
John R. Leo
Professor of English & Film Studies
