Letter: Christian right espouses hypocrisy

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 9:24 a.m.

Yet these same debaters forget the thousands of orphans or abandoned children who are doomed to misery and a bare existence so that the rich can have a tax cut.

They would cut back on food programs that are designed to give them at least a subsistence level. They are proposing school voucher programs that can only further degrade our public educational systems.

They will fight for the unborn, but once that child is born, they will abandon them to a life of want, poverty, malnourishment and ill-health; these champions of the right plain just do not care about a child once it is born.

I wish they would go back to the Bible and refresh their memories as to the words so eloquently written about how Jesus looked on this issue. In Mark Chapter 10 (13-16) Jesus spoke of his special love for children by saying, "It is to just such as these (the children) that the kingdom of God belongs."

Then Jesus embraced the children. In the same chapter of Mark, he expressed his contempt for wealth by saying, "Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor; you will then have treasure in heaven." And in Luke, Chapter 10, there is the parable of the "Good Samaritan" where he spoke of the need of compassion for one's fellow man.

To me, these are the true hallmarks of a Christian. However, that is not what I hear in these debates nor from the so-called "conservative Christian Republicans."

One can only conclude that this is the highest form of duplicity and hypocrisy being foisted on the American people.

RAY HARBERT