Letters: Take it from this atheist, web designer should win

Take it from this atheist, web designer should win

The Supreme Court of the U.S. recently heard arguments in a case that weighs anti-discrimination rights against religious rights. The specific question is: Should a Christian web designer who is morally opposed to gay marriage be forced to design a website that celebrates the marriage of a gay couple? Colorado law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation by any business that offers its products or services to the public. The web designer argues that she is not discriminating against the couple, she is discriminating against the website content being proposed.

Even though I am an atheist and support equal rights for all, I look at this as a case where the web designer is in the minority and the gay couple has the vast majority on their side. I would guess that 90% or more of web designers would be very willing and able to design the website for the gay couple. Additionally, this is not about purchasing a standard product or service, like renting a room, buying something off of a shelf at a store, hiring a taxi, or buying food in a restaurant. It is asking a person to use their creative talent to create something that promotes an act that they are morally opposed to.

If we force relatively small minorities of people to act in opposition to their sincerely held religious beliefs, especially when the person who feels discriminated against has many completely voluntary, peaceful alternatives, then we will be putting ourselves in an unnecessary situation where the minority will feel aggrieved and will fight without end. In a pluralistic society, which is what we have in the U.S. we should look first to find voluntary, peaceful solutions to our differences. The force of government should be used only as a last resort when no other reasonable alternatives exist, which is not the case here.

— Kurt Johnson, Urbandale

Iowans lack access to affordable insulin

Many Iowans won’t have access to affordable insulin in 2023, if the U.S. Senate does not act now. The Inflation Reduction Act capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for people with Medicare, but there is still the need for a private insurance insulin price cap in order to make insulin affordable for millions of children and adults with diabetes.

In our state, approximately 242,403 adults have been diagnosed with diabetes, with an estimated 18,839 people diagnosed each year. Quite a number of patients in my practice cannot afford the monthly co-pay of insulin due to the high cost and have resorted to rationing their insulin therapy, which often leads to inadequate blood sugar control and complications of uncontrolled diabetes such as loss of sight, nerve damage, heart attack and premature death.

Diabetes is a chronic disease, which imposes significant psychological stress on the patients in the daily management, and so worrying about the cost of their insulin therapy should not be something patients have to contend with as well. All people with diabetes deserve access to affordable insulin.

Limiting out-of-pocket insulin costs to $35 a month would be life-changing for the more than 1.8 million American children and adults with type 1 diabetes.

The Senate needs to act before the end of the year to cap the price of insulin for those with private insurance. This cap would save lives in Iowa and nationwide among the 7 million people who rely on insulin to stay alive.

— Dr. Adeyinka Taiwo, Iowa City The writer is an Associate Endocrinologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

Democrats’ values aren’t intrinsically better

Regarding Jack Hatch’s Dec. 4 guest essay “Democrats owe Iowans a complete reboot”:

The entire opinion can be summed up in one quote that reads “civil conversation to advance our values.”

Is it possible, Mr. Hatch, that your values aren’t what the majority of people in Iowa want? I firmly believe that the majority of voters detest many “values” on both sides of the aisle.

The real question is who is the most obnoxious that turns people off to vote for the other person. I would like to think that Iowans know better than to blindly vote for Santa Claus every two years. Iowans still want accountability and at a fair price and let Iowans determine a fair price.

As far as the Democrats on the national stage are concerned it is obvious, they want to be a bigger Santa Claus than their opponents, and they will have it now that Iowa is soon to be a permanent political flyover state.

Think about that Democratic value when you bow to the Democrats who want to completely disenfranchise Iowans by abolishing the Electoral College, because I expect that is next on the Democratic agenda.

— Don Williams, Prairie City

Republican leadership tarnished Iowa

Enough already about how Iowans have been “kicked in the teeth” in the loss of the “first-in-the-nation” status of the Iowa caucus.

If we really want to know who or what kicked Iowa in the teeth, the answer for Iowans is in our closest mirrors.

If we look there and at the Iowa Legislature, governor, our U.S. senators and representatives, the electorate and those who could not be bothered to vote, we will see who’s to blame for:

• All but obliterating the legacy and love for Iowa and others exemplified by the late Gov. Robert Ray.

• Leading for decades as the state in the U.S. that incarcerates the highest percentage of its minority citizens.

• Having legislative leadership that proposed imprisoning teachers for telling students things the legislators don’t want kids to know.

• Having a governor who favors private schools over public education, as well reflected in her policies and proposals.

• Booting out of the Republican Party legislators who had priorities for public service and not political agendas.

• Telling transgender kids we don’t give damn about them.

There are many more shortcomings, of course, as there are in human endeavors.

But, enough already of blaming others for Iowans becoming a liability and not an asset when it comes to offering insights to the nation as to how democracy can work well.

— Herb Strentz, Urbandale

Congress hangs rail workers out to dry

There are nearly 5,000 rail workers in the US impacted by recent votes by Congress. Congress voted to shove through a negotiation bill very few workers were happy with, but also voted to not give them any paid sick time. The great irony is that Congress has unlimited paid sick days.

The arguments in favor of Congress’s actions are weak, and clearly pander to the desires of their political donors, the railroads.

Please research the issue, and if you feel opposed to our senators’ and representatives’ actions, as I do, let them know. They voted to represent business, not people.

— Mike Bahr, West Des Moines

Pig poop goes almost unregulated

Let’s review Iowa law relating to manure. To have a home not connected to a city sewer system requires a septic system costing over $20,000. You will need a good-sized portion of land even for a system for only two people.

One pig produces 44 times the manure a human does, each day. To raise 300 hogs in Iowa you are not required to have a septic system, but just a holding pond that creates a lot of bad odors.

Does this make sense?

— Mike Montross, Winterset

Have four states go first

Iowa is a political junkie’s heaven, until it’s not. How about we have four states be first: Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Kind of like a Super Tuesday but smaller. The demographics would be representative, and the media markets are cheap.

I love meeting all the presidential candidates but I really didn’t need to meet Joe four times. Let’s share the love and cut down on the amount of events we must attend.

— Tracy Smith, Clear Lake

Accept later role, switch to a primary

There has been much uproar (in Iowa anyway) over the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws committee voting Friday to remove Iowa as the leadoff state in the presidential nominating order. This has been a long time coming, as national party leaders are looking for a more diverse electorate (to be first) than what Iowa can offer. It is the right thing to do. Embrace the change — or at least grin and bear it.

Also, this gives Iowa Democrats the perfect chance to move from the caucus format to a primary. The caucuses have long been the way to limit the general population involvement in favor of party leaders and insiders. Like six-on-six girls’ basketball, caucuses are antiquated, arcane, and no longer serve the purpose of modern times. It’s time for Iowa to join the 21st century.

— Jim McCracken, Creston

Just ignore the DNC

I have been involved in political campaigns for over 50 years. My opinion is that the current Iowa Democratic reaction to the national committee’s decision to shift the first-in-the-nation status does not need to dictate what the Iowa Democrats actually do. That vote only means that delegates from Iowa must be elected or certified on the date assigned. The national committee has no right to dictate anything more than when the delegates to their meeting must be officially elected.

The Iowa Republican Party will still hold its first-in-the-nation status. It will degrade the meaning of the Iowa selection if the Democrats do not also participate at the same time. It costs candidates seeking to run for president far less to test their strength in Iowa than almost anywhere else in America. It is why our caucus has historically been so successful. My recommendation is that the Iowa Democrats simply continue to hold their caucus at the same time the Republicans hold theirs.

Then the Democrats can hold a second event for the sole purpose of ratifying the election of the candidates their caucus selected on the date the national party has directed for Iowa so that our Iowa delegates are qualified to participate in the national selection process. Then the Iowa Democrats will have protected the rights of Iowans to make a real difference in who is selected to serve as our American president to see that those of us in the Midwest are seriously heard nationally.

— Lyle Simpson, Des Moines

Appalling to reject paid sick leave for rail workers

Averting a railroad strike was a bipartisan effort but the accompanying vote was disgusting. All our Republican congressional delegation voted no on providing seven days of paid sick leave for railroad workers. If sick, railroad workers must use vacation time to go to a doctor’s appointment. In 2022, hundreds of thousands of railroad workers are without paid sick leave as are millions of other Americans. While making record profits in 2022, the captains of industry can’t give paid sick leave? Shameful!

I called the offices of Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Rep. Randy Feenstra to urge them to support both bills, and all three of the interns I spoke to have paid sick leave, as do the senators and the members of Congress. Republicans, worker-friendly? Hardly!

— John Beisner, Ames

Did celebrity influence negotiations?

I doubt there are too many people who don't know who Brittney Griner is or why that name has been in the news non-stop since February. How about Paul Whelan? Until just a few days ago I could not have told you who this person was.

While I applaud the Biden administration for securing the release of Ms. Griner, I can't help but wonder why she garnered so much press while Mr. Whelan has sat in a Russian prison for four years with little mention on any media until now.

Is it because we value our sports stars more than others in this country? And now some are saying, maybe out of guilt, that there should have been more done for Whelan. Maybe if the media had made as big an issue of Whelan's four-year detention as they did Griner's 10 months there would have been a stronger public outcry? What's wrong with our priorities?

— John Moore, Newton

Cowardly Iowa Republicans won’t condemn Trump

I remember the nationwide meltdown over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a relative nobody, and all the angry demands for Barack Obama to repudiate him for his rants about American imperialism and conspiracy theories concerning AIDS, which Obama immediately did. Contrast that with the response from Iowa’s governor, two U.S. senators and three members of the U.S. House, all Republicans, when faced with the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 and undisputed leader of their national political party, openly saying he wants to dismantle the U.S. Constitution. Crickets.

How hard can it be for them to condemn someone who‘s literally encouraging the overthrow of the supreme law of the land they themselves swore an oath to defend and (or) support? Was the swearing-in ceremony just a silly formality for them?

If we each get to pick which part of the U.S. Constitution to trash, there may be some merit in repealing Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, for ex-presidents, effective immediately.

— Tim Facto, Des Moines

Rail workers know what they signed up for

The railroad employee referenced in a story in the Register (“Rail workers say deal won’t resolve concerns,” Dec. 4) is willing to shut down the rail transport because he missed his son’s birthday. I am retired from the Navy and then drove over the road for 26 years. I missed many birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and other occasions. I did it knowing full well that I needed to make a living and provide for my family. Also I'm sure I was paid quite a bit less than the average railroad employee.

He always has the option to quit and look for other work. I know several companies who are desperate for qualified drivers.

— Beryl Richards, Nashua

Food Bank of Iowa takes unwarranted criticism

We were disheartened to read the Dec. 4 Register story “Left Wanting.” It intentionally maligns an organization that for 40 years has helped feed Iowans facing hunger.

Food Bank of Iowa’s mission every day is to get food to the most vulnerable in our communities. In an era of record need, the food bank in September asked its partners to provide a minimum level of support – a three-day supply of food once a month – and all but 10 Des Moines Area Religious Council-affiliated pantries complied. Food rescue through certain retailers is a component of partnership with the food bank. (By the way, retailers decide how or if they wish to rescue food and how they want it distributed.)

Now, the few organizations that decided to end their partnership with Food Bank of Iowa have made it their mission to attack the food bank - literally biting the hand that, until last month, fed them.

When we have so many people facing poverty, what would motivate local groups to fight against more equitable food access for those in need? That’s the question you should be asking.

— Rich and Kim Willis, Waukee

Can we tackle some real problems with democracy?

Iowa caucuses? RIP and good riddance!

Now, let's talk about more serious things. Like an Electoral College where losers of the popular vote can still get the presidency. Or the United State Senate, where the 10 most populous states (with 180 million people) get 20 senators. and the 10 least populous states (with only 9.6 million people) get 20 senators, not to mention the people in the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico, who get no representation there at all.

We talk a lot about democracy. It would be nice if we'd put it into practice.

— Jim Walters, Iowa City

Democrats must focus on middle class

The Iowa Democratic Party doesn't need retooling, as Jack Hatch suggests; it needs rebranding. It's been going downhill since upper-middle-class professionals took it over in the 1980s. The party needs to represent the middle class and those who wish to become middle class. Otherwise, it has no future.

— James Sutton, Des Moines

Caucuses were too exclusive

Many Iowans, myself included, think that Iowa should have primaries instead of caucuses. Caucuses leave out many voters like the elderly, the handicapped, night workers, those without transportation, and those who fear going out at night to name a few reasons. A primary would be far more inclusive and tell which candidates Iowans really supported.

— Donnabelle Richtsmeier, Des Moines

Many aspects of caucuses were unsavory

Perhaps instead of whining about not being "first" in the nation, maybe we should be thankful that we were first for the past 50 years. The attention and income was nice, but it may be time to share the glory.

As for me, I will not miss the political noise, the grainy distorted visions of the opponent on TV, words taken out of context, half-truths, outright lies, demonizing others, or playing to the camera for photo opportunities. Political parties are guilty of such messages, but so are we all in our daily communications. So maybe in Iowa we need to focus on improving our attitudes by recognizing the good in others as well as ourselves.

— Jan Oswald, Altoona

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Letters: Take it from this atheist, web designer should win