Woman in White House: Letters to the editor, May 1, 2019

Woman in the White House? Say yes

It’s becoming something of a mantra among Democrats that a woman is unelectable in the 2020 presidential race against incumbent Donald Trump. In my opinion, it’s an unfortunate and unjustified fear.

Democrats — and everyone else — should remember that a woman won the popular vote in 2016 by 3,000,000 votes despite illegal intervention by the Russians, character assassination, and a last-minute unwarranted bashing by the then director of the FBI. Hillary Clinton — a woman — won the vote, but because of the archaic Electoral College, lost the presidency. Americans must not forget this fact of our recent history and use it as a lens to the future. A qualified female candidate is electable.

There are highly qualified female candidates with their hats already in the ring for 2020. Let’s not dismiss them as unelectable.

Initiative to stop human trafficking

Mayor Brand announced the release of the human trafficking initiative recently, bringing together agencies to end human trafficking. Fresno is centrally located in the middle of Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Las Vegas. Human traffickers target Fresno’s vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers and foster care youth.

According to the 2010 census, Latinos make up 46% of Fresno’s population, Latino children make up 65% and out of every 1,000 kids, 6.5 are foster youth, and 44% of our foster youth are born to foreign-born parents. Human trafficking exists in commercial sex exploitation of children, agricultural labor, and massage parlors, nail salons, restaurants, domestic services (cleaning, child care, elder care).

Why should Fresno care? Our children are being targeted, recruited and victimized. As a community, Fresno needs to take part with educating ourselves about human trafficking. Families need to address the normalization of prostitution and pimping in our daily lives.

Contact our city legislators; demand to increase safe and secure housing for victims. Allocate the demand of services that are currently not being met and fund raise for local coalition and non-profit human trafficking organizations.

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center can be reached at 1-888-373-7888.

Logic missing from abortion debate

I find it ironic that Christians declare war on abortion. Yet brush aside the fact that what they consider as a sacred life in the womb, that “in his image created” is regularly aborted at up to 12 weeks of gestation commonly known as a miscarriage. Even more heinous is that aborted image at 20 weeks of gestation called a still birth.

That’s the rub, the Catch 22, for Christians: they want life to be born, and preach a fetus has a right to life. Yet pregnancy, what their image supposedly created, brandishing his omnipotence, couldn’t even be intelligently designed enough to successfully pop every pregnancy out of the womb at full term alive. When miscarriage is well known to happen regularly, I would say it’s about time Christians moved onto a new crusade.

Like give peace a chance, because we all know only a Christian America historically sends it unaborted fetuses to war, which as I recall makes Mrs. O’Hare in Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” saying, “We were all just babies in the war” so apropos to Christians loving to sacrifice their sons for idiotic reasoning.

Throwing first stone? Think first

Immigrants are not bad people. Muslims are not bad people. Christians are not bad people. Homosexuals are not bad people. Straight people are not bad people. People of color are not bad people. Prostitutes are not bad people. Drug addicts are not bad people. Homeless people are not bad people.

When any of the above commits acts that harm others, then you may think of them in negative terms. But when you demonize them just for being who they are, then perhaps you need to reflect upon your own morality.

Too many leaders of church and state use this kind of bigotry to fire up their bases for their own fortunes or fame. Adolph Hitler was famous for using this kind of hate messaging to convince Germans of their superiority over everybody else, and that they should use any means to achieve their ends. This kind of hatred has been gripping our country since the last presidential election, and it has diminished us as a people.

The next time you judge people for who they are rather than what they do, think about your own imperfections (you obviously have at least one). Then maybe you will think twice about throwing that first stone.