I Liked Biscayne Park -- Until I Saw that Letter from Fred Jonas
In reference to the letter to the editor by Commissioner Fred Jonas of Biscayne Park (“Jerome, I’m Happier Not Knowing What You Believe” (November 2014): At first I thought, why should I take the time to share my thoughts relating to a heated topic in Biscayne Times this Veterans Day, as I and my family have proudly served and are still serving this country? Then I thought, should a commissioner have actually responded the way Mr. Jonas did?
I grew up in Miami have seen individuals choose politics as their calling, but a politician is supposed to serve his community and should not be biased. Comments should be made in a professional and positive manner. Mr. Jonas, just as you asked the writer, Jerome Hurtak of Miami Shores, to keep his comments to himself, I ask you to keep your negative comments to yourself.
Because you are a commissioner of Biscayne Park, I ask you to represent your community in a positive light. I recently thought of buying a property in your city, but after reading your letter, I will stay in the City of North Miami.
Yessenia GonzalezProud Resident of North Miami
Jerome Hurtak to Fred Jonas and Peter Konen: Thanks for Making My Point!
I welcome Mr. Konen’s and Commissioner Jonas’s responses to my letter to the editor (“The Grave Matter of My Conscience”) in the October Biscayne Times. They prove my point.
Mr. Konen implies that I’m a bigot for opposing gay marriage. As proof he offers a hypothetical man and woman who married with no intention of having children. According to Mr. Konen, there is a “clear parallel” between his hypothetical man and wife and a homosexual couple.
But the situations are not parallel. The hypothetical man and wife can change their minds (and hearts) and have children; the homosexual couple can’t.
The reason the homosexual couple can’t have children has nothing to do with whether people who oppose gay marriage are bigots. It is a simple fact of life. But to proponents of gay marriage, facts, logic, and reason don’t matter because they have a strategy to call anyone who opposes gay marriage a bigot as a means of intimidating and silencing opposition.
Commissioner Jonas’s letter presents the most tortured of non sequiturs. He repeatedly and emphatically says that what he believes is none of my business -- and then he proceeds to publicly state what he believes. Well, if what you believe is none of my business, why are you telling me and the rest of the world what you believe?
Commissioner Jonas, you are a public officeholder, and it does matter what you believe because you are making decisions that directly affect the lives of others, and what you believe affects the decisions you make.
Unfortunately, Commissioner Jonas doesn’t stop there. He continues from that rather confused point to suggest that my views should not be allowed in Biscayne Times. Commissioner Jonas will graciously allow me to discuss my views on homosexuality with my “religious friends” because he says this is a “free country,” but he warns, “Don’t spew them in Biscayne Times.”
A public officeholder suggesting that a citizen shouldn’t comment in a public forum because he doesn’t like those views should cause the entire community concern. But that is the norm for proponents of gay marriage because, as I stated in my original letter, homosexual marriage is a political artifice that has been and will be used to attack and silence anyone who believes homosexuality to be intrinsically sinful.
Thank you, Mr. Konen and Commissioner Jonas, for proving my point.
Proponents of gay rights don’t want anyone to be able to speak against their agenda. They fanatically pursue their own cause and are intolerant of those who differ -- which, by the way, is Webster’s definition of the word “bigot.”
One final thing. Since Mr. Konen likes hypotheticals, I offer him the following: Should bisexuals be allowed to marry two or more people?
Jerome HurtakMiami Shores
My Reply:
Dear Ms Gonzalez and Mr Hurtak,
Thank you very much for your comments and your reactions.
Biscayne Park is a unique community, and we like to think of ourselves as uniquely tolerant, too. I have neighbors and friends here of different races, different religions, and different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
I have friends and neighbors who are single, who are married with children, who are married and chose not to have children, who are married and could not have children, and who are gay or lesbian. I even have friends and neighbors who are gay or lesbian and who do have children. (Mr Hurtak, contact me privately, and I'll explain how something like that can come to be.)
My friends and neighbors, and constituents, in Biscayne Park know they can count on me completely to uphold this diversity among us, and to confront people with attitudes like yours. I am a faithful protector of the rights, the liberty, and the personal styles of my friends, my neighbors, and my constituents.
No, Ms Gonzalez, it seems likely you would not like it here. For whatever are your reasons, you are offended at the idea that an elected official would go to bat for you. And aggressively so. And it would not suit you to live in a community where one of your neighbors, or an elected official, didn't agree with you about something, or expressed him- or herself in a way of which you didn't approve. Luckily for you, all of your neighbors and elected officials in North Miami get it just right. Your level of intolerance and dismissal would leave you unhappy here.
And Mr Hurtak, you wouldn't like living as we do here, either. We are far too tolerant. We accept everyone. We don't insist people fulfill someone else's concept of a "purpose" of marriage. The purpose of marriage is commitment between people who love each other. We don't try to construct some other fantasy. We do not frown on people whose affections are same sex, and we do not frown on people whose affections are other gender. Our affection, mine and that of the community, is for all of them.
Fred Jonas
Commissioner, Biscayne Park
By the way, there is now a longstanding, well-formed, and entrenched battle between me and Jim Mullin, the publisher/editor of the BT. This began a few years or so ago, when Jim permitted or enabled various articles, letters, and columns that were aimed at trashing BP, and I confronted these articles, letters, and columns, and Jim's clear support and preference for them. He has never explained what he has against BP. Or it may be that he just has a special fondness for discord and misery.
ReplyDeleteWhat Jim does not tell anyone or make clear is that he exercises sole discretion about what he permits to be printed in the BT, that it is he who composes the titles of letters to the editor, and that he also takes the liberty to edit the letters. I have seen him permit lavish trashing of BP or an individual (like me, for example), while he rejects or hogties any effort for the picked on party to defend himself.
Jim takes breathtaking liberties with his self-appointed position of media producer. And as is true of most people like Jim, he hides behind "freedom of the press" and some empty complaint about not having (or choosing to have) enough room to print "everything."
If there was ever a complaint about the media misusing and distorting its prerogative under the First Amendment, Jim would be a poster example of the crime. One of the reasons I published these letters-- Gonzalez's, Hurtak's, and mine-- here in this blog is that Jim has taught me to have no confidence that he will print letters I send him, or no confidence that he will print them as I sent them. Jim has further shown me that I cannot expect to have a voice even when I want to respond to something that is directly and personally about me. He is extremely one-sided and vindictive. And, in his little way, powerful.
Fred