• Big box ban is an anti-growth strategy • Juggernaut of the gay agenda • Juggernaut of the gay agenda Big box ban is an anti-growth strategy It is critically important that we ban all further “big box” stores. Who
• Big box ban is an anti-growth strategy
• Juggernaut of the gay agenda
• Juggernaut of the gay agenda
Big box ban is an anti-growth strategy
It is critically important that we ban all further “big box” stores. Who cares about consumers? Certainly not politicians. We need to keep merchandise as expensive as possible for persons of modest means, so that they will be encouraged to move elsewhere.
Stan Quentin
Po‘ipu
What are the negative effects?
I have yet to find anybody that can tell me what the negative effects would be on the state of Hawai‘i if an independent Environmental Impact Study (EIS) were conducted on the proposed Superferry operation. My discouragement is nearly overwhelming after contact with Sen. Daniel Akaka’s state director, Mike Kitamura. After two months of waiting for an answer, he revealed that the newly re-elected senator feels that the Superferry is a state issue, and he was unavailable for a meeting. Here we have a project operating with funds from a federal loan guarantee, a project licensed by the federal Maritime Administration, a project that will travel through a federal Humpback Whale Sanctuary, a project with potential disastrous effects on 39 other species on the federal Endangered Species Act, a project that qualifies under the national Environmental Protection Act of 1969 as being under federal control via the loan guarantee and licensing above, and a project traveling in federal ocean boundaries, but somehow none of this has any federal relevance.
Now that the elections are over it appears that the response by state and federal officials to citizen concerns about their habitat is now even less important. I went to our governor with over 6,000 signatures of Kaua‘i residents who wanted an EIS on the Superferry and the county councils of Kaua‘i, Maui and the Big Island passed resolutions requesting an EIS, and she refused to meet with us. I have talked with Sen. Daniel Inouye’s office in Washington, D.C., and they said it is a state issue. I questioned Ed Case at one of his talk story meetings about what he could, or would, do for us to get an EIS if he were elected — he said it was a state issue. Now I find that our other senator is hiding behind the state issue referral.
Do the residents of the outer islands have no say on what happens to their culture or environment? At this point in time, nobody including the governor, the senators, proponents, opponents, Fukanaga, Garibaldi, Lehman or O’Halloran, knows what the effects of the Superferry operation will be on the environment or culture of the islands. I will be waiting for somebody, anybody, to tell me what negative effects could come to our islands through an independent EIS. How could an investigation to gain knowledge of impact to our islands possibly be negative? Don’t tell me how unfair it would be to have an EIS on the Superferry when Matson, Young Brothers, the cruise lines, Hawaiian Airlines, Aloha Airlines and Napali Tours didn’t have to get one. They were in business before the EIS law ever went into effect and they have proven themselves effective and necessary over the past many decades. The Superferry is a totally unique system with drive-on vehicles and daily service at speeds that have not been attempted by any other means, thereby needing an EIS.
If the answer is money, and if that is more important than our island’s environment and livability, then my faith in the common sense, integrity and scruples of our elected officials has declined even further than it was before the elections.
It is truly “Shades of Rome.”
Rich Hoeppner
Kapa‘a
Juggernaut of the gay agenda
For a “core thesis response,” the oft-repeated mantra “you can’t legislate morality” — the contention that moral arguments have no place in formulating public policy — is absurd. It is the duty of legislators to evaluate the right legislation needed to correct some wrong or injustice, or promote some positive or good result. Many of the same people who wish to exclude moral arguments from the debate about marriage are little troubled by the use of moral arguments when discussing other issues such as racial discrimination, capital punishment, or the war in Iraq. This should not label you a fanatic.
The conviction that human sexuality is rightfully expressed within marriage between a man and a woman is deeply rooted in our history and Judeo-Christian beliefs. Over a century ago, in Maynard v. Hill (1888), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the understanding of marriage springs from the fundamental morality of a people. The Court described marriage as “creating the most important relation in life, as having more to do with the morals and civilization of a people than any other institution.”
The advocates of anti-marriage and anti-family sexuality face a foe that they can’t defeat: Divinely created nature itself. According to the Pew Poll, the reason most given for Americans opposing gay marriage is that “homosexuality is not natural/normal.” This response is followed by “the purpose of marriage is to have children,” which also recognizes a purposeful — and thus “natural” — design for human sexuality.
The power of the innate realization that there is something fundamentally “unnatural” about homosexuality — even among those who consider themselves non-religious — should not be underestimated, and may well provide the vital motivation that will turn back the seemingly invincible juggernaut of the gay agenda.
Since reproduction requires a male and a female, society will always depend upon heterosexual marriage to provide the “seedbed” of future generations. This clear and natural evidence indicates that homosexual or lesbian households are not a suitable environment for children.
No citizen has the unrestricted right to marry whomever they want. A parent cannot marry their child (even if he or she is of age), two or more spouses, or the husband or wife of another person. Such restrictions are based upon the accumulated wisdom not only of Western civilization but also of societies and cultures around the world for millennia. Think thoroughly through the “anything goes” attitude. It falls way short of what we need.
Chris Metcalf
Lihu’e
