Reality isn’t consistent with claims

I’ve attended about 75 AFA and Boise State football games over the past 10-plus years. Invariably, when a team takes the field, a subset of players from both teams run into the end zone and take a knee with heads bowed.

I assume each is praying or meditating, but it seems only your guest columnist knows for sure. He:

1. Denounces “the AFA Falcons’ prayer ceremony.” I’ve never witnessed ceremonious activities, and I’ve never noticed any coaches direct or take part in the individual player activities. If these were “government agents advancing religion,” they failed.

2. Cites a Supreme Court case that “granting permission to similar student-led, student initiated mass prayer sessions at high school football games was a violation of the No Establishment Clause.” What I’ve seen over the last 10-plus years isn’t consistent with this description.

3. States that AFA cadets must abide by USAF instructions that can’t be construed “to be officially endorsing or disapproving of .any faith, belief, or absence of belief,” but he doesn’t tell us what faith or belief is being endorsed by their actions. His column leads me to believe that he thinks it is “right-wing evangelical fundamentalist Christianity” or a “virulent strain of fundamentalist Christian supremacy.” I guess these cadets just aren’t adept at getting the word out as I have yet to get that message.

Do I have a “dog in this fight?” Yes, but not a religious one. I don’t attend church, but I do care about liberty and individual rights.

John Larned

Colorado Springs

When was Constitution amended?

So Mikey Weinstein is upset because some Air Force football players pray in the end zone. He claims this violates the “No Establishment Clause” of the U.S. Constitution. I have to ask, when was the U.S. Constitution amended to delete “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” from the Religious Freedom Clause? If football players praying in the end zone is the same as “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” isn’t forcing these players to stop doing so the same as “Congress shall pass no law . prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

Bill Schaffner

Colorado Springs

Weakening the military

Re: Kathleen Parker, “Military gambles with cohesion by deciding to put women in combat,” Dec. 15:

Let me say up front it is a great insightful editorial.

I am a U.S. Army Vietnam-era vet, and I could not agree with you more.

Please refer your common-sense article to the current administration and the Department of Defense.

Being politically correct is great up to a point. However, weakening the military for the sake of politically correct is the wrong answer.

Your article touched on all the right points that make this a terrible idea. As humans, especially as males, we are flawed.

Allow the feminists who are pushing this issue to be among the first to be placed in harm’s way and examine their commitment to this politically correct idea.

I have no issue with women serving the country, but not in combat units, where unit cohesion is essential to the unit’s mission and survival.

It is bad enough that we waste the lives of your young men; let’s not undermine the ability of commanders to be successful on a future battlefield.

Willie H. Breazell

Colorado Springs

This is grow-up time

An open letter to the student athletes attending CC (“Black athletes discuss racism at CC,” Dec. 20). This is grow-up time. Why, after 3-plus years, are you still studying at this bastion of racism and class warfare? I would venture a guess that you did not personally pay for this high-dollar “education.” Please enlighten me if I am in error.

McQella Adams has really had it rough, huh? Playing volleyball and studying in Italy? This is such a slap in the face of all military sacrificing on a daily basis to protect your right to be a whiner. I find it entirely pathetic you would whine about not going to Vail! Are you serious or being sarcastic? Perhaps an urban, community college would be more appropriate, so as not to offend your sensibilities. How about you try working instead of whining.

Yes, dear, it is grow-up time. That is one of the intangibles that higher education used to facilitate, not how to find a safe place.

Mark Rozman

Colorado Springs

Anyone can submit an obituary

I am wondering how many people know that just anyone can submit an obituary. They don’t have to have the correct information, and you cannot get it erased. My husband, George V. Patterson, passed away on March 8, 2007. I put an obituary in the next day. However, there must have been someone who felt they could do a better job. They did not even know his age. They felt his adopted kids were not his “real” kids.

So again, I say George V. Patterson passed away on March 8, 2007. He left behind his loving wife of 37 years and five adored children. Star, Jennifer, Amber, James and Rose. All these kids lost their father, the only one they ever knew. I don’t find fault with the paper for publishing the obituary, but when I tried to correct it, I ran into a roadblock. A lot of sites have pulled that misleading obituary, and I have no way of correcting it. It is a thorn that rubs the scar of my grief.

I hope people will be more respectful of how a family wishes to remember someone and not feel obligated to alter what has been said.

Linda Patterson

Colorado Springs