Checking For a Pulse- Episode I

I stopped reading the funny papers four or five years ago.  I'm the type of guy that still likes to read his newspaper everyday and soak a lot of it in during my lunch, but when it got down to the comics page, I was ready to be done with the newspaper.  I just wasn't into it anymore.

I mean, really, who needs the Comics page when you have the Public Pulse?  For the most part, the letters are pretty reasonable, with people making either perfectly fine arguments or statements, or towing the line for their political party of choice with talking points from either the previous day's Rush Limbaugh or I suppose Keith Olbermann show.  Fine, no problem.  But I'd say that just about every other day, you get one from someone who is off their rocker, making unbelievable cause-and-effect connections.  Typically, these involve gay marriage.  Gay marriage will lead to more abortions, gay marriage will lead to the Huskers losing to Texas, dogs and cats will be living together, gay marriage this and gay marriage that, and won't somebody think about the children?  Somebody?  

On that note, here is the first edition of "Checking For a Pulse," a look at any letter in the Omaha World-Herald's "Public Pulse" section that catches my eye.  And today we have a doozy, from one Georgia Ebel of Omaha.  My plan is to simply excerpt these things, but this one has to be taken in it's entirety.

Some seeds bring destruction
Spring is here, and the Earth is burgeoning with fresh beauty. Soon, shade trees in our emerald city will be blossoming and scattering their multitude of seeds.
Some of these seeds will be quite annoying and even destructive. Take, for example, a seed that sprouts too close to a structure. In time, if left to grow, it could crack and even destroy that structure.
Horticulture is not my theme here. The seeds I am concerned about are the lies that have been growing and menacing the very structure of our social order.
What are these lies? Beliefs that unnatural sexual unions should be called “marriage” and that explicit sex education taught to younger and younger children will prevent disease and poverty and lead to greater liberty.
These lies should not be promulgated by laws written by the local, state or federal governments. Far from strengthening the civilized, peaceful society we desire, chaos is the unwanted standard that ensues.
Georgia Ebel, Omaha

Poetic, isn't it?  To summarize, gay marriage will lead to chaos in our society.  Remember when the eastern half of Iowa sunk into the Mississippi River, and the western half fell into the Missouri?  Yeah, me neither, but all kinds of chaos ensued.  Or life went on, nobody was hurt, and only some zealots pretended that their life could never be the same.  The focus and passion this issue inspires from certain segments of the community is something I will never understand.


Being against gay marriage is one of those things that I just don't get.  There's no point in rehashing the arguments for it- either you get it or you don't, and me saying that it doesn't harm anyone in anyway is probably not going to convince you.  I'm not even going to touch the sex education issue that was lumped in with gay marriage, but I do live in a county that has one of the highest rates of STD infection in the country, so that's something we can all be proud of.  And I'm not going to lie, I had to look up 'promulgated' to make sure it meant what I thought it meant.  Surprisingly, it's not a sexual term- I thought Ms. Ebel was getting a little freaky on us.