Thompson a literary giant

Hunter S. Thompson, literary maverick and popular gonzo journalist, took his own life on Sunday. His death represents the rolling back of a progressive era and the failure of its flag bearers to storm Capitol Hill and dig in. There are no more excuses now.

Many feel as if we have been on a steady march to The End since the election of Reagan, and now that the truths Thompson helped to coax out of the cave have gone back into hibernation, the feeling of a world closing down pervades. Just 30 years after Nixon was chased from office, a worthy successor has turned this country into a monolith of everything he stood for.

Like Hemingway, one of his icons, Thompson was crippled in old age by a lifetime of indulgences and a powerful insight that destroyed the mystery needed for a meaningful life. The resulting depression has ended the lives of many such men who sought the truth and perhaps came as close as anyone can come.

Thompson stood on precariously righteous ground, often alone, but always on his feet, and usually, in the right. Left with a land full of accommodating sycophantic journalists, he departs as a paragon of what journalistic ethics should be: uncompromising, brutal and honest.

Brooks Kary
journalism senior

Heterosexuals not given rights in Constitution, either

In response to the letter from Rob Monteleone, "Gay marriage not part of Bible or Constitution."

Interesting fact: The Constitution doesn't explicitly state that heterosexuals are allowed to marry and divorce and remarry without limit, to be federally recognized in unlimited successive marriages and to waste untold tax dollars processing their repeated divorce hearings. Regardless, this is the case in the here and now.

Gays and lesbians aren't asking for mandated religious acceptance of their unions. They are asking for the secular protections and conveniences afforded heterosexuals who wish to couple, pure and simple. Like it or not, we live in a country in which Britney Spears is legally wed and divorced within 55 hours. Who has accused her of attacking the sanctity of marriage? Who will deny her a second marriage license for having mocked the sacred institution of marriage? Elizabeth Taylor takes on and discards husbands as if they were torn socks. Tax dollars provided by homosexuals and heterosexuals alike will continue to pay the judges hearing her divorce proceedings for the foreseeable future.

For those who would apply the mandates of the Judeo-Christian Bible to only a section of the population, I respectfully remind you of Christ's view of hypocrisy: bad, bad, bad. If gays and lesbians cannot be married in this country because the Bible says so, then heterosexuals cannot be divorced and remarried without committing adultery, (a Class 6 Felony in Arizona,) because the Bible says so. If you really want to stand up for faith in the United States, then ask your legislators and President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman, legally bound and legally inseparable until the event of death. Anything less is religious privilege granted to heterosexuals that is not granted to homosexuals - the definition of discrimination.

When Christian heterosexuals are ready to live truly by the Bible, then they have sufficient grounds to ask that the rest of the country do the same. Until then, this remains a representative democracy; one in which all of us don't mind skirting religious dogma when it suits our interests.

Christopher Tindell
biology senior