Letters to the editor: Keep all gods out of government

On the same day I read a letter in this newspaper with the heading, “God should guide us,” Asa Hutchison, governor of Arkansas, signed a bill making it legal for doctors in that state to refuse medical treatment to LGBT people because of their religious beliefs.

The letter quoted a well-known poem, “First They Came,” ending with the statement that because no one spoke up for the socialists or trade unionists or Jews there was no one left to speak up for “me” when the time came, and implied that one must speak out against radical ideology as a nation under God.

I don’t know what that radical ideology is. While the United States has the largest Christian population in the world, there are also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others. Within the Protestant branch of Christianity there are more divisions, sects, branches and denominations than I care to count, each with differing interpretations of values, each claiming superiority over the others. With so many religions and not even considering the 28 percent of the population not affiliated with any religion, I ask whose God are we talking about here?

When we allow God to dictate our legal system we will end up as we have in Arkansas where it’s OK to speak up for some people but leave others out. We cannot be a nation under God because God apparently can still pick and choose whom to save and whom to throw onto the garbage heap, and enough politicians around to make it legal. I don’t want the letter writer’s God in our government. I don’t want some doctor’s God in our government. I don’t even want my God in our government. We can and should be only a government under laws.

Gregory Opstad,

Cloquet