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Letters to the EditorEditor, I was upset the other day when I realized what the red fliers I have seen all over campus are claiming. The fliers claim that 10 percent of Ohio University's student population is homosexual and that the rest of us (straight people) need to stop offending them. The flier says the information is based off the Kinsey Report about human sexual behavior from 1948 and 1953. Hasn't the 50-year-old Kinsey Report been proven wrong for a number of years now? The problem with the Kinsey Report is that Alfred Kinsey, who conducted the survey of some 5,000 people, hardly had a representative sample group. Twenty-five percent of the people Kinsey interviewed about their sexual past and preference were prison inmates, many of whom were in prison for sexual offenses. As if this fact isn't enough to discredit Kinsey's findings, he also interviewed, in his words, "several hundred male prostitutes." This number alone is enough to throw off the findings completely. Kinsey claimed that 10 percent of the nation is homosexual, based off his findings. But because he had such a biased sample, his conclusion cannot be taken seriously. Modern-day surveys have found the actual percentage of homosexuals in America to be between 1 and 3 percent of the total population, a staggering difference from the 10 percent that Kinsey and the flier claim. The funny thing about the fliers is the slogan at the bottom of the page. The slogan is: "Unlearn. The campaign to end hate, ignorance and bias." Seems funny to me that the group who distributed this flier wants to end ignorance but can't even get its own facts straight. So don't believe the hype. Ten percent of the population is not gay. Maybe we could start accepting homosexuals if they would start speaking the truth instead of feeding the public lies. Timothy Boggs Editor, The letter to the editor on Tuesday was as one-sided and thoughtless on an issue as one can get. The writer says that the Patriot Act is ironic because it was enacted in the name of "freedom." Actually, the bill was enacted in the name of defense (which safeguards freedom). The writer's facts about the bill are right in the broad new powers given to the FBI and so forth, but what he fails to understand is that the bill terminates itself after a period of several years (perhaps he's scared that this won't happen). He also ignores how the bill arrived to near-unanimous approval in the first place. Suspension of rights is something that has happened this way before, during World War II and especially during the Civil War, a testament to the danger of the current situation. Terrorist organizations and their individual members used the rights that all individuals in the United States have to get away with the planning and staging of the World Trade Center, Pentagon and Pennsylvania terrorist attacks. The web of legal arrangements to get a warrant, tap a phone and do what needs to be done is time-consuming, costly and ineffective. No one believes our rights should be taken away from us, but most will agree about the strange nature of war and the sacrifices that have to be made to win. President Abraham Lincoln was a benevolent dictator to save the Union. This bill temporarily relaxes rights (NOT eliminates them) that we cherish so those who practice evil can't hide behind them. As sad and scary as that is, it has to be done. The writer wants to protect the rights of the individual. The real irony is that the best way we can ensure these rights is by defending them with this bill. It sure beats the alternative . James Yerian |