Pinthouse Pizza
Chronicle More Than Hypocritical
RECEIVED Wed., Aug. 3, 2005
Dear Editor:
How ironic and hypocritical that the Chronicle, which proclaims "alternative" lifestyles, found it necessary to go all the way to far West Texas to expose those unorthodox Mormons with their multiple mates and partners [“Meet the New Neighbors,” News, July 29], while your Personals advertisements in the same issue facilitate sexual Variations of Women Meeting Women and Men Meeting Men, and thereby invite us to greet and "Meet the New Neighbors" right here in Austin.
The Chronicle appears to rely heavily on a legal defense of traditional family and marriage, but may be forgetting how people in Eldorado, Texas, might likewise see Austin lifestyles as peculiar. You also present Mormon's beliefs in the Second Coming of Christ as unusual. Try that description on most Austin Christian churches. In your seemingly eager journalistic anticipation of the U.S. government burning down the Mormon church in Eldorado, is the Chronicle ready to call in Janet Reno with her torches and tanks for the rescue? Mormons are historically used to that kind of treatment. Your story also fails to note that some polygamists are now testing the legality of their own lifestyles on marriage and sex thanks to the recent Supreme Court rulings on the legal right to privacy in sexual behavior.
How ironic and hypocritical that the Chronicle, which proclaims "alternative" lifestyles, found it necessary to go all the way to far West Texas to expose those unorthodox Mormons with their multiple mates and partners [“Meet the New Neighbors,” News, July 29], while your Personals advertisements in the same issue facilitate sexual Variations of Women Meeting Women and Men Meeting Men, and thereby invite us to greet and "Meet the New Neighbors" right here in Austin.
The Chronicle appears to rely heavily on a legal defense of traditional family and marriage, but may be forgetting how people in Eldorado, Texas, might likewise see Austin lifestyles as peculiar. You also present Mormon's beliefs in the Second Coming of Christ as unusual. Try that description on most Austin Christian churches. In your seemingly eager journalistic anticipation of the U.S. government burning down the Mormon church in Eldorado, is the Chronicle ready to call in Janet Reno with her torches and tanks for the rescue? Mormons are historically used to that kind of treatment. Your story also fails to note that some polygamists are now testing the legality of their own lifestyles on marriage and sex thanks to the recent Supreme Court rulings on the legal right to privacy in sexual behavior.
Gene Burd
[Assistant News Editor Lee Nichols responds: Burd misses the major point of the article. The Chronicle is not the least bit interested in condemning any "alternative lifestyle," but it is certainly newsworthy that the FLDS leadership is accused of numerous violations of law, including funneling public funds into FLDS coffers and sexual assault of minors – neither of which fit into any "alternative lifestyle" that any reasonable adult would approve of. Nor are we "eager" for a violent end to the FLDS, but it is again newsworthy that experts who have studied or have firsthand experience with the FLDS believe that such an outcome is possible.]