Thanks

I have received Liberty magazine for many years and always find each issue fresh and stimulating, particularly in the treatment of controversial issues. I teach a class in religious liberty at the Dickinson School of Law and often find articles in Liberty that are timely and useful in offering students current treatment of various church-sate issues.

The two pieces by Justice O'Connor and Justice Scalia in the November/December issue are especially helpful in understanding (or at least trying to understand) the direction that the U.S. Supreme Court is taking in the matter of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

Thank you very much for supplying additional copies of that issue for use by my law students.

JON F. LaFAVER, Professor of Law

Dickinson School of Law

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Retirement Gift

During the years I served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, I received Liberty magazine. Every issue was reviewed for potential application to issues likely to come before the court.

I have now retired from the bench and still the court clerk continues to forward Liberty to my house, and still I read every issue. Better yet, please send Liberty directly to my home. I appreciate your consideration.

JUDGE SAM HOUSTON CLINTON

Austin, Texas

Free Exercise Advice

Your articles about RFRA and the 1990 Smith decision prompt me to share this view.

It seems to me that the use of peyote in a very distant way violates the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Since this commandment deals with man's relationship to man, it follows that laws violating it in any degree should not be abrogated on the grounds of religion.

As to RFRA, it seems to me that a strong court wouldn't need it and a weak court would override it.

Keep up the good work!

BILL TASSIE

Burlington, Michigan

Smoked Out

If I read any magazine more infuriating than Liberty, it does not come to mind. Although I basically agree with your religious liberty position, there has long been a streak of mean spiritedness in your publication. Lately it's the Iambs and Pentameters that reveal Liberty's bigotry.

The November/December issue's treatment of Richard John Neuhaus is a good example. You have taken a single Neuhaus sentence, out of context, and built on it a caricature of ______, well, I don't know who it is. Jesse Helms, maybe? It surely is not Neuhaus. Your description of a "paradox"-people ready to legislate prayer in public schools mocking the latest anti-smoking crusade-seems utterly inapt; when has Neuhaus advocated prayer in public schools? And the insinuations that Neuhaus is one of those "loudest in defending the 'smoker's rights'" or "busy boycotting Disney" are contemptibly mendacious.

Even if you wanted to tease Neuhaus, his Roman Catholicism was irrelevant. Why drag it in? Does his conversion from Lutheranism particularly irk you? Would you tolerate him better if he professed a religion only 3 times older than Adventism rather than 6 times?

By the way, I'm not so sure that smoking does more damage to society than homosexuality. The complex issue of "family values" aside, the AIDS epidemic is not over yet (you're not one of those in denial about the nexus between sodomy and AIDS, are you?). I am heartened that America has not used AIDS as an occasion to set up Gulags for gays, or to press for early euthanasia of AIDS patients, but I do wish that the pendulum had not swung so far in a goofy "defend-the-underdog" direction.

Regarding your treatment of Neuhaus: you should be ashamed. A retraction might even be in order if you can do it without getting in one last snipe.

ROGER WILLIAM BENNETT

Lafayette, Indiana

[First of all, I didn't take Mr. Neuhaus's quote out of context. Read it. My point was that for a man who talks all the time about the sanctity of life, there's a great ambivalence on his part in regards to smoking, which kills hundreds of thousands every year in the United States alone. After reading the piecce again, I will concede that it could have given the impression that I was saying that Neuhaus, specifically, advocated prayer in school or the Disney boycott. That wasn't my intention. Instead, it was just to point out that those who do those things are strangely silent on the issue of tobacco. The fault lies with me if that point wasn't clear. But I stand firm on my basic position: for a man so concerned about life, why isn't he speaking out against something, such as tobacco, that has killed and will continue to kill millions?-Ed.]

Recently, the world's oldest living person died at the age of 120. She had quit smoking two years before because she had become too blind to light her own cigarettes, and was too vain to ask anyone else to do it for her. The average life expectancy of a homosexual male in America is 42. There is a demonstrable link between homosexuality and AIDS, but the link between cancer and smoking is only arguable. Cancer can often be cured, but AIDS never can.

America was a better place when most adults smoked. There were social graces involved with smoking that now have been lost and not replaced with anything else.

Back in those days there was a common expression, "Don't make a federal case out of it." Now we make a federal case out of everything. The archbishop of San Antonio went to the Supreme Court (Flores v. City of Boerne) to demand his constitutional right to tear down a church! The supporters of RFRA could have chosen a better case to take to the mat.

It distresses me that there appears to have been a racial undertone to the Flores case. The city of Boerne, I am sure, was founded by German immigrants, and the Catholic church there caters mainly to Mexicans. Such problems, I fear, will increase until we stop letting people come into this country faster than we can absorb them.

I am pleased to report, however, that after the archbishop lost his case, the leading citizens of Boerne did what they should have done in the first place. They all sat down together in a smoke-filled room and worked it out.

GARY D. JENSEN

Lake Jackson, Texas

In your November/December issue, Iambs and Pentameters, "The Marlboro Men," you said that "it would seem that smoking does a lot more damage to society than homosexuality." I believe that this statement is contrary to Scripture. Homosexuality is described as an abomination (Leviticus 18:22) and part of God's judgment on a fallen society (Romans 1:28-32).

The practice of homosexuality is more harmful physically and spiritually than smoking. God is more concerned about what comes from our hearts than what goes in our mouths (Matthew 15:16-20). The problem that keeps this world from being a better place is sin, not smoking. Man is a sinner and he was a sinner long before he became a smoker. The only solution to man's sin is the grace of God, and without His grace, we are without hope.

KENNETH R. WASHBURN

Apopka, Florida

Correction

In your article "Shipwrecked?" (November/December), you quote history professor Ann Withington as stating that "in 1744 the Congress took a stand: no more horse racing, no more cock fighting, no more card playing, no more gaudy dressing, no more theater." As the 13 original Colonies had no Congress in 1744, I must assume that the date is a misprint either for the Continental Congress of 1774 (which hardly seems likely: the Southern delegates loved their horse races, cock fights, card games, and theater), or for the more Victorian Congress of 1844. Would you please clarify?

BRIAN E. STRAYER, Ph.D.

Andrews University

Berrien Springs, Michigan

[Good catch! Unlikely or not, the date was supposed to be 1774. Ann Withington refers to the meeting as "the Congress," which should have been amended to "Continental Congress." I'm glad to see my former history teacher keeping tabs on me.-Ed.]