Double standard

Why do Christians scream about any even slight intrusion of the government into church affairs or imposition by the government or society, generally, upon their lives, but don’t mind imposing themselves and their religious views and values upon the government and the rest of society?

It’s because they operate on the double standard (exemplified by Roger D. Boynton’s letter, “Ten Commandments,” BDN, May 24) that everyone else is wrong and so they don’t have the right to impose their views upon Christians, but Christians are right and so they have the right to impose upon the government and society.

The Ten Commandments have no more right being placed on schoolhouse walls than legislative agendas have being placed on church walls or legislative debates have being conducted in churches or synagogues. Schools aren’t churches and shouldn’t be expected to do the work of churches.

Everyone knows where the Ten Commandments can be found, any time the individual wants to look at them, without having to plaster them on schoolhouse walls and distract students and teachers from their real work and purpose there. If the Ten Commandments being placed on a wall were a guarantee against violence, there wouldn’t have been those little episodes in Christian history known as the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Conquistadors in the New World, the holy wars between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and other such delightful occurrences. So, the Ten Commandments can hardly be proffered up now, after all of that, as a panacea for school violence and moral decay.

They are just a set of rules, conceived by human beings, not by any God. Also, pornography doesn’t produce uncontrolled lust in human beings anymore than food itself produces gluttony.

John D. Partin

Brewer