In response to Patrick Miller’s “A license to discriminate in Kansas” July 5, 2018

Dear Patrick,

I understand your compassion for LGBT peoples. No one likes to see people suffer, and people with same sex attraction suffer immensely. In the short term, we can alleviate a person’s immediate suffering by giving them license, but by doing so, in the long term, they will generally end up in loneliness, emptiness and a shell of the person they were created to be. It is possible to live joyful and fulfilling lives by having chaste relationships with people you love. ‘Courage’ is a group of Catholics who experience same-sex attractions and who are committed to helping one another to live chaste lives marked by prayer, fellowship and mutual support.

Your article is biased towards the inferred gay rights, over the constitutionally stated right of religious freedom. (That’s o.k., I’m biased in my opinion too). The adoption laws in Kansas, as they stand, do not give one side and edge over the other. As in other states, where anti-discrimination of LGBTQ laws were enacted, private adoption agencies like Catholic Charities have closed down rather than go against their faith or against the good of the children.

I do hope that you can find equal compassion in your heart for children that are being deliberately placed in a situation where they will not have either a father or a mother. I feel that placing them into an artificially constructed homosexual family is not for the good of the child, but rather, to fulfill the fantasy of a homosexual family, which naturally does not exist. Do you really need to experiment on children forty or fifty years for scientific proof, only to show that these children will suffer from such an arrangement? We already have data based on 50 years of easy divorce that shows children from single family households fare far poorer in all areas of life compared to children from a two parent family. Workers experienced with adoption, say it is not in the best interest or good of the child to be adopted into homosexual situations. I cite, the web article, Sexual diversity in the Netherlands – Holland Alumni network (a pro-gay network), summarizing the Health and well – being of LGB study by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), 2012, in English. The reason I use this study is because LGBT has been legal and accepted in the Netherlands for some fifty year, and I didn’t want to hear that the results were from the U.S. where there is bigotry and discrimination against LGBT. So, can you justify putting adopted children into this type of environment where there is: High rate of suicide.. The mental health of bisexuals is worse than that of homosexuals. A large number of bisexuals use drugs and suffer from psychological problems. Gay and bisexual men have a relatively greater risk of falling victim to sexual violence. Gay and bisexual men have an increased risk of STDs and HIV, despite their more frequent use of condoms. This is not in the study, but from my understanding, a homosexual marriage commitment means they stay with their partner, but partner infidelity is common and acceptable..

I also hope you consider the feelings and requests of birth mothers who give up their child to go to a family with a mother and father, because they can’t provide that environment. In states that made homosexual anti-discrimination laws, Catholic Charities had to shut down, denying an avenue for such women to be guaranteed their child is going to a home with a father and mother. Furthermore, Catholic Charities is the most affordable organization to provide adoption. All this would be gone: that which is in the child’s best interest, the mother’s desires for a mother/father family, and affordability for common families.

So, as the adoption laws stand in Kansas, both sides don’t get totally what they want. LGBTs can’t get service at every adoption agency, and religious groups can’t save every child from being adopted into a LGBT artificially constructed family.

Michel Werth, Hays

While the 2018 wheat harvest remains fresh in the minds of Kansans, it’s worth remembering civilization has been directly linked to the cultivation of grain. When primitive man first learned he could grow wheat during the summer, store it for winter food and use the leftover wheat to plant in the spring, he realized he could settle in one place.

Villages and towns followed as man no longer needed to follow game and forage for food. Anthropologists speculate that primitive man probably first chewed the raw wheat kernel before he learned to pound it into flour and mix it with water to make porridge.

Approximately 10,000 years B.C., man first started eating a crude form of flat bread baked with flour and water. Since that early beginning, wheat has become known as the staff of life. It has remained a staple in our diets in this country and around the world.

During this year when the Kansas wheat crop will be one of the smallest on record, it seems only fitting to take a closer look at this healthy food source.

For many, our day begins with a slice or two of bread made from wheat. Some people continue to eat wheat in snacks or some other form, throughout the day. Still, most Americans rarely eat more than four or five servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta foods each day. The daily recommended intake is six to 11 servings according to U.S. dietary guidelines.

Today’s well-informed consumer continues to understand the importance of increasing the consumption of whole grains. The convenience and nutrition of wheat makes it a natural for our fast-paced society. Wheat snacks come in an endless variety bound to please nearly every pallet.

Wheat consists mainly of complex carbohydrates that provide a source of time-released energy. The nutrition community recommends 45-65 percent of our daily calories come from carbohydrates.

Nutritionists also advise eating no more than 20-35 percent of our calories from fats and approximately 10-35 percent of our calories from protein.

Wheat foods provide fiber in our diets. Fiber is the carbohydrate in food that humans cannot digest. Fiber acts as a broom and sweeps out the digestive tract.

Eating fiber regularly helps with fewer incidences of colon cancer and some types of heart diseases. Sufficient amounts of fiber in our diet have been related to better control of diabetes and an overall healthy colon, according to nutritionists.

Research also suggests eating wheat bran may help prevent breast cancer.

Wheat foods are good sources of fiber as are fruits and vegetables. The American Dietetic Association recommends eating 20-35 grams of fiber daily. Americans usually consume only about 12 grams.
Kansans use hard red winter wheat in yeast breads and hard rolls. This state also produces the best flours in the world.

Look for ways to serve wheat products with every meal. This may not only improve your health and that of your family, but the economy of Kansas – the Wheat State.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

For you folks who grind your teeth when that little circular arrow is spinning on your computer, or who see the screen on your computer go blank during that Netflix movie, well, help eventually may be on the way.

That help? The Statewide Broadband Expansion Planning Task Force, which is the Legislature’s start on making sure that from border to border there is fast, reliable and affordable broadband Internet access.

And for you folks who by now try to remember where you put your walker before heading out to pick up the newspaper on the driveway, this is a whole new level of “universal access.” The old version? That was when the state’s effort was to make sure that everyone in Kansas had access to a black dial telephone back when phone poles were sparse in areas where cattle outnumbered Kansans and where there were more combines than lawn mowers.

The effort: To first map out the areas of the state where access to fast Internet service is important to Kansans, to businesses and industries and to governments and organizations. That’s going to be tricky, because nobody doesn’t want the fastest Internet available, whether it’s for watching movies, sending e-mails, the kids doing school work at home or competing for contracts for intellectual services.

It’s different than the old days when a paved road was a major boost for economic development, isn’t it?

The issue has turned out to be not just a rural issue where cell towers and cable services are sparse and a hill or a grain elevator can hamper that fast Internet service. There are blocks in major Kansas cities where the skies are obstructed by cable wires and a forest of antennae atop buildings, there are down times when that service isn’t available or your computer or phone can’t get online.

Figuring out where that Internet over wire or through the airwaves is substandard or not dependable is going to be tough. For rural areas, it’s going to require cooperation among providers and some cost sharing between state and federal governments and the providers of Internet access to get that signal everywhere—at a profit.

Because, now that we’ve all got phones, broadband Internet access is joining water, electricity and mail as basic services that Kansans are demanding.

At some point, it’s probably a good thing that the Legislature has decided to jump into the complicated issue of getting that broadband to everywhere in the state, and to some point, it’s going to be interesting to see where the priorities are on that service.

Spend money, or maybe impose a tax on Internet service so that the high-demand areas help finance the rural areas? That’s what happened with telephone service, as your phone bill tells you.

Does that access become a right, like access to public schools, which by the way want more broadband access so that students can study from home and the schools can provide study materials from around the world, not just the occasional e-mail or those textbooks, which once printed aren’t updated?

It’s going to be interesting to watch and important for the state…

But…those little circular arrows are spinning on the task force, because its members haven’t all been designated by legislative leaders, and there’s not a list yet of the non-legislative members who are supposed to figure this broadband business out for us.

Yes, there is this election coming up, and in some rural areas of the state there are candidates talking about bringing high-speed broadband to every acre of Kansas.

But for now, that little arrow is still spinning…

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com