Dear Editor:
Let me add my voice to Amy Valent’s and Diane Oltarzewski’s (August 10) thanking Jim Hague for his article (August 3) “State Funding to St. Peter’s Prep Was Wrong.” Of course it was wrong — unconstitutional — to give public tax money to a private religious institution, but what can one expect in an age such as ours? Has this country ever reached such a low, as now? All this suffocating religiosity everywhere, from our court-appointed President on down, is yet another betrayal by this generation of vipers to the principles of our great Founding Fathers, all of whom were flaming atheists and radicals right out of the glorious European Enlightenment. The reason for all this smarmy public displays of unctuous piety (hypocrites, Jesus called such people) is to instill the notion that religion establishes morality. Just the opposite. Look at the evils being done in its name now and forever. Good behavior (“morality”) comes from parents and the playground. Pushing and pulling, a toddler learns give and take. Puppies and kittens at play learn not to bite or scratch too hard. It take no religion, no sage, no Hillel, but only common human sense dating back to the Neanderthals, to teach that, if there is to be peace, one doesn’t do to others what one doesn’t want done to oneself. The rest is b-s.
T. Weed.