Opinion > February 14, 2008

By Kenneth Strickland | Guest columnist

In the past week, the responses to the article written by Angelique Nolan and myself —“Dems embrace diversity, equality” (Jan. 31) — have been ferociously inaccurate. The purpose of the article was to answer the question of “Why Democrats Are the Best.” So I feel we can begin with that point.

Garrett Edel wrote in his article entitled “Dems Represented Poorly in Article” (Feb. 7) that the “Democrats are the best” statement “reeks of my dad can beat up your dad mentality from the playground days.”

Now with all due respect to Edel’s fine writing ability, that was the topic we were given. He also states “sidestepping the use of ‘that’ used in a sentence twice.” This sentence, in my opinion, is just being picky and was a cheap tactic on the behalf of Edel to point out tedious alleged grammatical errors.

Edel also writes about the unemployment rates in the U.S. currently. He claims that “the highest ever recorded unemployment rate was over 25 percent during the Great Depression.” I don’t wish to directly contradict that statement, as it lacked the basis of understanding of our statement that “unemployment rates are at record highs.”

I will just simply add to that statement. The unemployment rates have been at a record high since 2002. Nolan and I were not trying to debate the unemployment rates of the Great Depression as it is common sense, or at least I think it should be, that unemployment rates were going to be much higher during the Great Depression as the stock market crashed and banking systems were in conflict thought the entire nation. Let’s now move on to the question of marginalization and homophobia.

The Matthew Shepard Act was proposed to be attached to the Defense Authorization Act which would almost guarantee it would be passed. The MSA was removed from the DAA after Bush threatened to veto if it hit his desk. The bill would have protected homosexuals, transgender people and women from being exposed to hate crimes.

Bryan Davis Keith retorted in his angry article “Democrats’ article exaggerates truth” (Feb. 7) that the reason the Matthew Shepard Act failed was because “hate crime legislation is ignorant of the fact that all crimes are actions of hate.”

So, let’s go into that a little bit more since Keith also stated “Way to go Stephen Holler (I think he meant Moller) for fighting the good fight for the GOP.” Sean William Kennedy was killed on May 16, 2007. He was killed by Stephen Moller, the person Keith just gave kudos to, sarcastically or not. Stephen Moller was released on a $25,000 bond and forced to be on house arrest. This was such a harmful punishment for killing a person based on his sexual orientation. He even sent a text message to Kennedy’s friend saying, “You tell your f***** friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.” Hate crime acts, therefore, are important, especially because Kennedy was someone I directly cared about and loved.

It would be nice to have a world where every crime was punished equally, but life doesn’t always work that way. Certain legislation is necessary to make up for life’s inequalities.

Keith later mentions that the Democrats are “progressive enough to run a woman whose political experience consists of eight years of international photo ops.” He also states, “Why aren’t we running Laura Bush?” Keith certainly needs to step back and do his research.

Hillary Clinton has been a senator for two terms and has been working to fight for health care for all people even before that. Laura Bush might as well be a trophy wife.

We cannot bridge the gap between the political knowledge of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Finally, with regard to the comments made about the usage of song lyrics by Madonna in our aforementioned article. I don’t even feel the need to respond to those assertions.

Our use of song lyrics was not intended to be direct legislation but more so intended to be for the usage of creative writing, something the other side did not seem to grasp in their responses to our article.

Kenneth Strickland is a freshman from Godwin, N.C.