Disappointed at rude people
I was at the Neighborhood Connections meeting last week. I’d like to thank Deputy Mayor Susan Honda and Councilmember Linda Kochmar for pulling it together, and I’m glad it was at the Community Center. There were some in attendance who seemed unaware that before COVID, Neighborhood Connection meetings happened relatively often. This was not a first.
One speaker commented that hotels/motels used to house homeless people would turn out like the William J. Wood Veterans House – a bunch of drunks and people on drugs, they said. Because so many heard this comment, I’d like to let you all know that really isn’t the case. The Multi-Service Center manages the William J. Wood building in Federal Way and does an exemplary job.
I was dismayed by the rudeness. People booing if they didn’t agree and constantly interrupting when someone was speaking. I understand people may have gotten a little rusty during COVID, but really?
I don’t have a lot of experience with people living in their cars or in the woods, but I coordinate a gift drive for children at the holidays, and last year met a young woman with two small children living in her minivan. She wasn’t on drugs. She simply had fallen on hard times and had no home.
The vast majority of those in attendance the other night would have done what? They don’t like any of the suggestions offered and I didn’t hear them offer any. Virtually every religion has a version of the Golden Rule — you know, that one about how to treat other people. Or have you forgotten?
How is somebody experiencing homelessness going to find a job, stay clean (when it applies), or get “their act” together if they’re living under a tree? Evidence has shown that getting people into a home helps them to get back on their feet. I’d like to see them require a person to work at getting off drugs and/or alcohol where applicable, but even if they don’t, they still need a home. And to those complaining about how it will bring in more homeless — they are already here. Except now they’re living in unsanitary and unacceptable conditions in the woods.
It’s so disappointing to hear a crowd of neighbors boo loudly at a suggestion to help people with no home, but offer no suggestion of their own.
Catherine North
Federal Way
Say no to smoke
Thank you for the article on wildfire smoke (“Wildfire smoke: A burning health issue,” July 9). It explained clearly how hazardous smoke is for all of us. But wildfires are not the only smoke we are exposed to these days. Since metal fire pits sold by stores such as Plow and Hearth became “fashionable,” people with small backyards started to burn wood in residential areas in the summer.
When only less than 50% of the households in Washington are equipped with air conditioners, this kind of “micro smoke” is a big problem. Every time our neighbor contributes to global warming by burning wood, we have to close our windows. As the article pointed out, smoke is not only bad for those with respiratory illness, it is bad for everyone and for the Earth. Nobody has the right to pollute the air we breathe. It would be good to see such micro-burning in residential areas to go away.
Miyuki Taguchi
Federal Way
Sexuality in schools
Responding to the letter about Totem Middle School (“Schools are at odds with Christian culture,” July 2): I also find it offensive to expose or promote the alternate lifestyles when our kids are at such a vulnerable age. Their brains are like a confused sponge so they absorb truths, lies and half-truths just as easy. We are all responsible to let them develop and when much older they can decide what kind of man or woman they might want to be. This not a place where sexuality should be discussed.
Bob Welch
Federal Way
Christianity vs. LGBTQA
This letter is in response to two letters published July 9, which took issue with a previous letter complaining about anti-Christian bias regarding sexuality and gender in Federal Way Public Schools instruction.
These letters seem to claim that LGBTQA behavior is welcome in Christianity. In one letter’s words: “(LGBTQA people) and their heterosexual friends may be as much Christian as you are. I am definitively a Christian and I do not have any problem with the LGBTQA community.” This is conjecture and opinion, not the Bible, nor church history.
The other letter states much the same, given the context, though the language is a bit indirect (and this after accusing the original letter writer of spreading misinformation): “She and anti-LGBTQ groups believe that the diversity of genders and sexual orientations violate religious Christian beliefs. Let me assure you, these topics are only violations of her personal beliefs, and most definitely not violations with Christianity as a whole.”
This is misinformation. “Christianity as a whole” has never affirmed these behaviors over the last 2,000 years. And a plain reading of the Bible condemns these behaviors (the behaviors, not the people, if the reader can grasp such a possibility. Recall Jesus died because of behaviors, but for the people committing them, that is if they would repent in faith etc.).
A growing number of congregations and denominations are only recently breaking from tradition and affirming these new kinds of relationships and the behaviors that ensue. And the Christian denominations from which they break then refer to them as in error or possibly apostate.
These letters are evidence of recent polls that show people who identify as Christian don’t know much about the Bible and, I would add, church history.
Torger Helgeland
Federal Way
