LETTERS Drought, Indiana, religious freedom, odious initiative, genocide, etc.

Drought money pit

Re “Brown signs drought relief package, urges conservation” (Capitol & California, March 28): The Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown want to waste billions to build water storage reservoirs. Why? The ones we have are almost empty. How will new empty ones help?

Why not use that money for something useful? We have an unlimited supply of water in the ocean. Desalinated water may be more expensive, but it doesn’t require rain or snow.

The state also erred in requiring power plants to use air instead of water cooling. The heat is wasted in air cooling. If water cooling were used, the heat could be used to desalinate water. No matter which method was used, distillation, zone freezing or reverse osmosis, all could use this heat which is now wasted.

Drought relief is porcine

Wow, another $1.1 billion down the drain. Stop the strutting just because you smell pork. Get to the few known solutions such as storage and desalinization. Otherwise, do a rain dance and save billions.

Indiana businesses should pay

Re “Indiana law ignites big outcry” (Page A1, March 28): Some business owners feel their freedom to practice religion is threatened by having to accept another group’s right to exist and marry.

This type of mindset of what freedom is has always been the perverse use of freedom by conservatives. This use and understanding of freedom was the basis for slave owners’ right to have the freedom to enslave others.

If these businesses want to deny services, then they should lose all tax deductions, exemptions and other benefits that the state allows them. Their business income should be taxed as regular income and at the appropriated rate. They shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from their prejudice.

Don’t patronize Indiana

Don’t attend your gay nephew or co-worker’s wedding, and believe whatever you want to believe, but when your right to religious freedom amounts to discriminatory treatment by a business, you’ve gone too far.

In case you haven’t figured it out, a majority of Americans now believe in “live and let live.” Our dollars can be spent at other businesses and in other states where we are treated with dignity. Mine will not be spent in any state which legalizes discrimination.

Incidentally, just to clear up one piece of misinformation, your church has the absolute authority to marry only the couples it wants to. My church, the Episcopal Church welcomes all.

Fix the Constitution

Re “Odious, murderous initiative” (Letters, March 23): Any court would find the kill-the-gays initiative to be unconstitutional. Likewise for a lot other initiatives, some of which pass before judges ever see them.

We should change the state constitution to allow facial challenges to initiatives at any point in the process. We shouldn’t waste everyone’s time on initiatives that will never get on the ballot and that, even if they do and then pass, will be overturned immediately.

Initiative is illegal

The initiative process is not a public forum for people to state their opinions. It is a method for voters to pass laws which are presumptively valid.

The Sodomite Suppression Act clearly violates the equal protection and due process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. Attorney General Kamala Harris is taking the correct steps to prevent abuse of the initiative process.

The author of the proposed act has numerous other ways to continue promoting his point of view, including pushing for a constitutional amendment which would make this contemptible proposal potentially valid. At that point, the attorney general would have no choice about letting it go forward.

At the moment, however, this is no more censorship of an idea than preventing somebody from using a bullhorn outside your house at 3 a.m.

Is humanity devolving?

I agree with letter writer David Sinclair’s views that to murder gays and lesbians would not only be a horrendous act, but would set the human race back several thousand years.

Throughout time, humans have slowly become the dominant species, ruling over other stronger and bigger animals using our wits. But to suggest we kill something simply because we do not understand it shows that we are no better than the animals we consider our lesser. For people to think that mass genocide has any value proves that humanity is devolving.

Help needed for Christians

I am disillusioned by the lack of news coverage of the Christian holocaust that is happening in the Middle East. Why is the world turning a blind eye to this genocide? Our government claims to be degrading the forces of ISIS in Iraq. Yet we are averaging seven bombing runs per day.

They say history repeats itself. The world once stood silent while Jews were exterminated. It is happening again. Only this time it’s happening to Christians. Will the world face this reality before it’s too late?

This story was originally published March 30, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "LETTERS Drought, Indiana, religious freedom, odious initiative, genocide, etc.."