It’s something, just not marriage

It’s something, just not marriage

It was probably inevitable. According to Dutch and German newspapers, it was really a bad day for Jennifer Hoes of Haarlem in the Netherlands. She turned 30 and became a bride. She married herself. Wearing a gown studded with 200 latex copies of her own nipples, she promised before Haarlem’s registrar to love, respect, honor and obey herself. “We live in a me society,” she explained Der Spiegel, “hence it is logical that one promises to be faithful to oneself.” There is a certain logic to that.

The stories say nothing about what happens in the event of a divorce, or if she someday wants to marry somebody else. I don’t think we are going to see a rash of “self marriages” anytime soon, although I have no doubt those who are taken up with the idea will find clergy ready and willing to accommodate them with a blessing. Jennifer Hoes is a more bizarre instance of the orchestrated assault on marriage as a union of a man and a woman.

As to the proposed federal marriage amendment, I’m all for it. We know what marriage is. People are free to choose something else, but they are not free to require the rest of us to call that something else marriage.

Father Edward Neroda, Youngstown

The writer is pastor of St. Stanislaus Church.

Congress is in a class by itself

As Americans we have always come to the defense of the underdog, the poor, the starving or the maligned.

Most Americans have paid into Social Security for decades, and now face a bankrupt plan which at best will pay them double their actual contribution or less. Against any standard interest-bearing savings account over the same time period, that is a fraction of what they would have earned.

I suggest that members of the House and Senate take every cent of their pension funds, and roll those funds into the Social Security account, which would allow them to receive what most Americans will receive on Social Security.

Are they too good or too valuable or perhaps too elitist to be in the same plan, swimming with all we minnows who have no choice but to take whatever the politicians have left in our accounts?

Why do government employees have their own pension to begin with? Their pension has never been robbed of funds to pay for other political pork-barrel projects, as have our funds from the Social Security plan. Their pension accounts (funded by the American people) has never been more solvent as compared to our Social Security account.

This act of solidarity would send the message to the American people that they are indeed ready to stand with us through thick and thin by putting their money where their mouths are.

Larry Schuler, Canfield

Following the law is part of the job

I was surprised to read in the Aug. 9 Vindicator that Democratic Party Chairman Dave Betras thinks so little of Ohio’s election laws that he was prepared to violate the law just so he could have a meeting at a more convenient time. If it wasn’t for The Vindicator making this public, he probably would have violated state election law.

DeMaine Kitchen had resigned as 2nd Ward councilman in Youngstown and the local Democrats needed to meet to have a replacement. Betras wanted to name a replacement for Kitchen at an already scheduled meeting, which would have violated the requirement for a minimum 5-day waiting period.

Betras is an officer of the court, and I assume he has an obligation to follow the law. I know that if he is appointed to the Board of Elections he will have to take an oath to uphold the law. If he can decide to violate the law just because it might be convenient, then he does not have the temperament to serve on the board of elections.

James Stein, Youngstown

Cutting the core isn’t in the cards

I live in Youngstown and have no opinion, pro or con, on the proposed Canfield 4.9-mill levy, however, there is something that bothers me.

Supt. Zambrini says that if the levy doesn’t pass, they may have to cut core academics. This statement is, to say the least, disingenuous.

There is no way that science or math will ever be cut in Canfield. Before this ever happened, the state would have taken over the school system.

Ted O’Connor, Youngstown