The Hays Daily News from Hays, Kansas • Page 4

A4 THE HAYS DAILY NEWS OPINION TUESDAY APRIL 27,2004 Editorial Quarter vote If they want our two cents, we vote for the bison, as a symbol of strength e're too old, and no one has asked our opinion, but if we weren't or if they did, we'd vote for the bison. Kansas high school students are the ones voting this week on which of four designs will be minted on Kansas quarters next year. We suppose such weighty decisions should not be left to the judgment of mere adults. Anyway, if they want our two cent's worth on the quarters, we'd vote for the bison. You might not ever see the designs, so here they are.

They are not meant specifically for adult consumption. Our inquiring eyes can find them somewhere on the state government Web site if we were to go looking. Otherwise, the pictures are for young eyes only. We did find a poll on the state Web site, and, for the record, we voted for the bison. The'Indian quarter is good, too.

It depicts the Kansa brave with outstretched bow, just like the one that graces the top of our capital, and our state motto, Latin for "To the stars through difficulties." It is an honorable symbol of our great state, but along with the U.S. motto, that is a lot of Latin for one quarter. Maybe that is why we like the bison. Like the Native American warrior, the bison is a symbol of strength. A symbol of both dignity and grace.

And of resiliency The other two designs feature the old wheat and sunflowers. Actually, wheat and sunflowers make their way onto the other two quarters as well. As they often do on our license plate designs, they just won't go away. We have nothing against wheat pr sunflowers. We are an agricultural state, and sunflowers do grow like weeds.

They just don't speak to us like the loin-clothed warrior or the woolly bison sentinel. So, we vote for one of those. Or, we would, if we could. Nothing against having the state's high schools students have the honor. We should seek their opinions more often.

But we hope they choose the bison. Or the Indian. They should be casting the critical ballots this week, although apparently the state bumbled the election some, and schools were riot altogether aware the election was coming up and how they were to execute democracy from the high schools. Well, if they are lacking votes, they can have ours. Did we mention? We vote for the bison.

editorial by John D. Montgomery A march for women The editorials represent the opinion and institutional voice of The Hays Daily News but are signed by the author for the reader's information. Guest editorials are from other newspapers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Hays Daily News. Other content on this page represents the views of the signed columnist or letter-writer. The Opinion Page is intended to be a community forum.

Guest editorials and syndicated columnists are selected to present a variety of opinion. Reader Forum Fair is letting Kansans vote on a marriage amendment The debate about gay marriage needs to be understood in its historical context, particularly with changes that began in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Western culture has gone from the "prim and proper" excesses of the Victorian era to new excesses in a sex-drenched culture. The gay marriage push is part of this larger change and a significant one considering that prior to these trends, no civilization in human history had considered gay relationships as marriages. Even gay researchers have acknowledged the inherent promiscuity of homosexual relationships, with some saying that the cheating ratio of committed gay males approaches 100 percent.

And in Scandinavian countries, gay marriage legalization has been a part of sweeping social changes. Stanley Kurtz of the Hoover Institution has said, "Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable." He points out that today the majority of Swedish children are born out of wedlock and the few young couples that get married often do not like to admit it since what they have done is so far from the norm that they feel embarrassed. Christians of various stripes have stood against these trends a given right in democracy and opponents have countered by crying "separation of church and state." This is an obvious attempt to mar- ginalize religious conservatives, especially considering their use of clergy from the religious left whose political influence they wouldn't dream of squelching. A more sober view is to recognize that all laws have a base in morality, and in a free society, people of varying religious values all have a right to lobby for change. And the Kansas marriage amendment is very democratic in its approach.

If the Kansas Senate passes HB 5033 without amendment on its second try, Kansans will have the chance to decide how we want marriage defined in our state. This is no violation of the establishment clause. In fact, it's only fair since such a strong issue affects all of us. Andrew McHenry, president Evangelical Association of Greater Topeka Leo Barbee president Lawrence Association of Evangelicals WASHINGTON And a grand time was had by feminists from all over the nation Sunday, out exercising our right to peaceably assemble and to petition our government for redress of grievances. While we still can.

The women who organized the march came up with a scheme to count our numbers and announced that there were more than a million of us there and it was the largest demo in the history of the nation. ABC had us down to "tens of thousands." Other networks admitted to "several hundred thousands." I didn't see Pox News, but I assume we were down a few thousand on that channel, and almost all the news outlets gave either some or equal time to the few hundred anti-choice groups that turned out. The National Park Service has quit trying to guess the numbers on big marches, so it was up for grabs. As a longtime reporter on protest marches, I guarantee the best way to estimate a crowd is to count all the feet in it and divide by two. Actually, there are a couple of traditional methods you can use an aerial photo, divide it into small squares, count all the people in one square and then multiply that by the total number of squares.

Or you can station yourself at a given intersection, count the people who pass by in one minute, and then multiply that by the number of minutes the whole march takes to pass. No one ever has claimed either method is precise. I can only report that women filled the Washington Mall on Sunday and put in a whale of a show. As a veteran of women's marches, I'd say this one was almost as overwhelmingly white as they used to be the minority women present perhaps were more than the sprinkle they used to be, but still just freckles in our midst, a sign of one of our great failures. Republicans for choice came from everywhere.

What was amazing was the intergenerational aspect of the march. When women of my generation, the so-called COMMENTARY Hays residents would see tax savings borne by trade region When will enough be enough? First it was the added sales tax for a job creation trust fund, then it was more sales tax for a super-duper swimming pool, or "aquatic park." Next was added sales tax for the library expansion. Now Hays City Manager Randy Gustafson comes up with the brilliant suggestion to have Hays city voters approve an increase in their city sales tax three-fourths of a cent in exchange for a possible reduction of 12 mills in Hays city property taxes! Hays sales tax would increase from 6.3 percent to 7.05 percent and is calculated to bring hi an additional $3 million annually and it would be paid partially by visitors coming to Hays to shop, as the city manager noted. And that's where the rub comes in. None of the towns in the so-called Hays trade area will realize one penny to help lower their property taxes, yet we are expected to pay this tax to help lower property taxes in Hays.

The economic news hasn't been exactly great for any of the towns in the so- called trade area including Plainville, Stockton, Phillipsburg, Osborne, Palco, Natoma, Hill City, Hoxie, Ness City, WaKeeney, La Crosse, Russell, just to name a few but the dollars from these and other outlying communities certainly will contribute a large share to your projected 12-mill property tax relief for Hays. As for the vote on the proposed sales tax increase, with only the citizens of Hays voting on the question, it surely will pass, as they all will want to have their property taxes lowered. But is this the kind of goodwill and appreciation they extend to those in the trade area? These outlying towns are trying to hold things together and survive. Some are succeeding, others aren't. They look to Hays and particularly Fort Hays State University for direction, and when the dollars are spent there, they don't want to be unfairly taxed to support someone else's property taxes.

Just as a reminder: Even if Hays grows by leaps and bounds, if these other towns fade away, Hays also will be the big loser. Yes, enough is enough. Harlan Lill Plainville Second Wave of feminism, first started marching, we were on those occasions overwhelmingly young, with just a sprinkling of our mothers and grandmothers among us. This time, almost everyone came as family, ranging from Gloria Steinem, now 70, to Ann Richards' granddaughters. Pregnant women for choice flecked the crowd, marching for their unborn sons and daughters.

The signs ranged from feisty to funny to touching. "My daughter marched for your rights in Iraq; I am here today to march for her rights." "Keep your rosaries out of our ovaries." "George Bush believes in abstinence Lucky Laura." And, of course, the omnipresent, "Who decides?" Unlike the pre-Roe. V. Wade days, we did not have so many vivid memories of the dead from illegal abortions. The daughter of one famous victim her dead, bleeding body a photographic icon of those long- past times, came and spoke movingly The father and brother of Becky Bell, the first girl, but hot the last, to die from parental consent laws, came to speak.

The families of women who were too poor to afford abortions after public funding was cut off came as well. The global gag rule re-installed by George Bush in his first official act as president drew representatives from 57 countries where women have been so hideously affected by it. One news channel reported that the right to choose whether or not to bear child is just 12th out of 14 big issues on which people will decide their votes. Sadly many older feminist say they are bewildered by the attitudes of a substantial minority of younger women, women born after Roe v. Wade in 1973, who either are op- posed to abortion or who do not consider it an issue.

I'm not. I never thought about getting breast cancer, until it happened to me. Abortion providers who have been subject to acts of terrorism for years were there to speak the bombed, the shot, the maimed, the widows. Still strong, Still working. As I have written before, I hate writing about abortion, because it is a subject on which so many already have made up their minds, unless or until they are personally confronted with that difficult choice that abstract argument is of little assistance.

In fact, the numbers show that those "officially" opposed to abortion fundamentalist Christians and Catholics have abortions at about the same rate as the rest of us. This never has surprised me, because I am a pro-choice advocate who always has known I never would have an abortion myself. The fact is that I always wanted to have children, and from about the age of 20 onward, halfway through my college career (no guarantees what I would have done before then), I think I would have been able to support a child economically (Hell, I knew how to type). Whether I would have been able to raise child or was competent to raise a child emotionally and psychologically, who knows? I've watched mothers do it well with far fewer advantages than I had, I've watched mothers completely crumble under the burden. And I still think the question is, "Who decides?" If you know you are going to bear a child that is disastrously deformed (which you still can't find out until about the fifth month), who decides? I don't mean to be unkind, but the burden of caring for a damaged child is not only known to break up marriages but frequently to have an unhappy effect on the other as well.

(Not always, I grant you.) But frankly so much of it has to do with whether there is enough money to care for the damaged child. Molly Ivins is a columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. MESSA3E: I'M MOT GEORGE BUSH The mall of shame A pro-abortion marcher in Washington on Sunday said, "I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the generation after that." I'd like to ask her which generation aborted babies belong to. This woman was just one of many converging on Washington's Mall to rally for "abortion rights" and "global reproductive freedom." Sadly, her statement, just like the broader "pro-choice" movement, is shrouded in deception and euphemism. I mean no offense here, but the more you examine the pro-aborts' claims and distortions of language, the less sympathetic their cause becomes.

Consider certain statements of the rally's supporters and participants. Actress Lynda Carter said, "There is a religious and moral superiority and arrogance that so many, not all, Republicans have. It is the ultimate intrusion by government to tell a woman when she can have children, if she has them at all." No pro-life advocates I know are trying to tell women when they can have children. They can have them anytime they want. They just shouldn't be allowed to "terminate" them in the womb.

And if the pro-life position is grounded in religious convictions, on what do pro-abortionists base their casual disregard for life? Aren't they saying the mother's "right to choose" is a moral right? If not, why all the moral outrage? And if it is arrogant for pro-lifers to stand up for innocent life, how arrogant is it for pro-aborts to ignore the dignity, rights and even existence of the unborn? As for "ultimate intrusion," I wish Carter would tell us how she justifies intrusions on the baby's body and life. Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, "The march is about the totality of women's lives and the right to make decisions about our David Limbaugh COMMENTARY lives." Other pro-aborts insist that women's health is their great concern. But their zeal has little to do with choice or women's health. If they truly cared about choice, they wouldn't favor government-funded abortion on demand without restriction, including partial- birth abortion. They'd want pregnant women to make informed choices.

They would make sure they were aware of the latest research suggesting that large percentages of women who've had abortions experience emotional or psychological problems. They'd tell them about their babies' possible sensitivity to physical pain. They'd tell them of the suspected linkage between abortion and breast cancer, even if the evidence is inconclusive. And they'd quit exaggerating concerns over the mother's health as a justification for partial-birth abortions. Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America said, "Anti-choice extremists are not just against abortion they also oppose contraception and comprehensive medically accurate sex education." Oh? I wonder if by that she means the routine suppression of the abstinence message and facts about the failure rate of condoms for both pregnancy and HIV transmission.

And they lecture us about safe sex? Another marcher invoked the specious pro-abort battle cry "Stop the violence." What about violence toward the babies? And what about the violence of some of the marchers themselves? I received an e-mail from a woman who went to the march as a "ProtestWar- rior." She said the marchers desecrated her sign, screamed insults and made profane gestures and that one man physically hurled her to the ground. She said, "These tolerant, inclusive, choice liberals were the most hateful 800,000 people the 12 members of PW ever encountered." Another pro-abort said that pro-lifers have no respect for the Constitution. By "Constitution," I don't think she meant the document signed in 1787 that British Prime Minister William Gladstone described as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." More likely, she was referring to the penumbra-and-emanation-laden "living document" that unelected, unaccountable, lifetime-appointed, activist judges often mold to fit their ideologies by inventing such fictions as the constitutional right to privacy. The "pro-choice" movement is based on the lie that an unborn human being is not a human being. If pro-aborts had nothing to hide, would they use such misleadingly innocuous words as "choice," "reproductive rights" and "family planning" when they mean the act of terminating life? If "choice" were so popular with the public, would the pro-aborts' presidential candidate of "choice," Sen.

John Kerry, feel compelled to dissemble, saying he is personally against abortion but opposed to the government regulating it? That's like saying he's personally opposed to shoplifting but against the government interfering with the thief's choice. Actually, it's much worse than that. As scientific and technological advances continue to shed light on the darkness of their position, pro-aborts will become increasingly desperate. The marchers treated us to just a little bitter foretaste of that Sunday David Limbaugh is an author and political commentator..