Letters for Monday, December 18, 2006

• No competition costly

• Stunning hypocrisy

• The real gay agenda

• The Aloha Spirit, alive and well

No competition costly

Regarding Charles Kawakami’s Guest Viewpoint (“Limiting size of big box stores,” Forum, Dec. 15) in Friday’s edition: If we are over-retailed, then those retailers who can’t meet the competition will fail. That is just the way it should be. If Wal-Mart doesn’t expand, then Costco’s grocery section will have no competition, and they should have competition. None of the smaller stores will go out of business. If a national marketeer could put local stores out of business, Safeway would have done that. They didn’t. As to the ambience of the island, one won’t even be able to see the Wal-Mart expansion from the highway; it will be behind the existing store, which can hardly be seen as it is.

The money that is spent in and by Wal-Mart stays on the island as the employees are the biggest percentage of the money that Wal-Mart pays out other than paying for the product they sell. The net profit from the store is a small fraction of the amount of money that is taken in from their sales.

And most of that goes to their stockholders, who are probably associates and are profiting from those profits. All in all Wal-Mart is far and away better for the communities they are located in than a few would want you to believe, especially union bosses who want a bigger paycheck for themselves at the member’s and customer’s expense.

It is difficult enough for people to afford to live here, so every possibility should be used to keep expenses low, unless your desire is to force the local young people to move to the Mainland so that they can afford to raise a family and have a home to call their own without having to share a home with parents, grandparents and siblings.

The way things are going on this island, only the wealthy land owners and their children will be able to stay here. Everything else will be bought up by successful people from the Mainland.

Could I be wrong about my ideas here stated? Sure, and I hope I am ’cause I don’t see things changing for the better in the near future.

Kapa‘a

Stunning hypocrisy

Chris Metcalf (“Juggernaut of the gay agenda,” Letters, Dec. 16) quotes Pew Poll research where people stated “the purpose of marriage is to have children.” This statement is naive to the point of absurdity, and alone is enough to bankrupt the argument which people who believe it are trying to push. Marriage is completely unnecessary in the process of having children, since marriage is not a prerequisite for having sex and never has been. We can debate all day and night about whether or not children are better off if they are the product of a marriage, but it is very clear that marriage is not and never was necessary to have children.

If it were, we wouldn’t be here because early humans had no such thing as “marriage,” thus wouldn’t have had children. This marriage/children tie is something modern humans dreamt up — there is nothing “natural” about it. Even monogamy outside of the politico-religious trappings of marriage is not strictly innate.

If, however, these people really believe that the two should be so intimately related, why are they not pushing for legislation to criminalize having children out of wedlock? Since marriage and childbirth have such a strong, sacred tie to each other in their eyes, it would seem that having children out of wedlock is a much more direct violation of their sensibilities and God’s idea of moral behavior, and people who engage in such activities should be the real target of their vitriol. Why the disconnect?

The answer is quite simple — they know they would never be able to get such legislation passed, because it would infringe upon the rights of too many people. It would hit too close to home to many of the legislators, the clergymen and the Bible-thumping banshees who would then not be able to partake of their own secret predilections. Those filthy, immoral gays with their “agenda” make a much easier target, and we don’t care about them anyway, so what if their rights are violated?

The hypocrisy and complete lack of logic and reason of this anti-gay campaign masked in its faux-morality is simply astounding. Why not focus all of that energy on making sure that your own heterosexual marriage and family is healthy and stop worrying about what the homosexuals are doing in their own lives, which isn’t any of your business anyway?

‘Ele‘ele

The real gay agenda

I thought Ms. Metcalf’s letter (“Juggernaut of the gay agenda,” Letters, Dec. 16) deserved an appropriate response. So, to come clean, I now present to her, in the spirit of giving, the Homosexual Agenda:

• 6 a.m.: Gym

• 8 a.m.: Breakfast (oatmeal and egg whites)

• 9 a.m.: Hair appointment

• 10 a.m.: Shopping

• Noon: Brunch

• 2 p.m.:

1) Assume complete control of the U.S. federal, state and local governments, as well as all other national governments;

2) Recruit all straight youngsters to our debauched lifestyle;

3) Destroy all healthy heterosexual marriages;

4) Replace all school counselors in grades K-12 with agents of Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels;

5) Bulldoze all houses of worship; and

6) Secure total control of the Internet and all mass media for the exclusive use of child pornographers.

• 2:30 p.m.: Get 40 winks of beauty rest to prevent facial wrinkles from stress of world conquest

• 4 p.m.: Cocktails

• 6 p.m.: Light dinner (soup, salad, with Chardonnay)

• 8 p.m.: Theater

• 11 p.m.: Bed (du jour)

And to all a good night.

Kapa‘a

The Aloha Spirit, alive and well

My doorbell rang on Sunday afternoon and there were three teenage boys standing outside. To my huge surprise, one of the boys (Robin Eilant) handed me my wallet. He had found it in the Safeway parking lot and had driven it all the way to my home in Lihu‘e. In it were all of my credit cards and a significant amount of cash. What a wonderful holiday surprise and how thankful I am to Robin and his friends. I wish all of you a very happy holiday season!

Lihu‘e