Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Testing positive Atlanta, Ga. To the Editors: Mr. Carlin is right that the gay community is concerned about the fact that so-called public health steps will disproportionately...
...Time after time I have seen gay men fired from their jobs with no prospect for employment and no hope of health care insurance...
...Make mention, even in passing, of the Christian prisoners known as the Plowshares...
...The editors of Commonweal, I remind myself, live in and around New York, which is to say, in the real world...
...Is peace then likely to emerge...
...The editors know that Hiroshima was (and then was not) just such a nest of diverse lives, occupations, structures...
...Then, good sense intervened...
...To the Editors: It seems to me that the editorial dissent by Patrick Jordan [May 22] manifests the strength and flexibility of Commonweal and its editors...
...Here at Jesuit University of Detroit our course, "Technology, Society, and Human Beings," concentrates on specifically ethical issues: the case of the German VDI engineering society supporting Hitler...
...The simple knowledge that an employee has tested positive to one of the AIDS blood tests — regardless of whether that person has been diagnosed as having AIDS — can and often does lead to his immediate discharge...
...Does this editorial ever face the basics...
...I read your editorial on nuclear deterrence ["Is Deterrence Moral...
...These Catholic editors are doing a skilled Pfeiffer pas de deux...
...Now, we await the real editorial...
...As such, deterrence has become an often impregnable conceptual system which is based on worst-case scenarios and a rigid Soviet threat...
...it means no health insurance...
...This circular argument was expressed more elaborately in your editorial but I don't think that I have summarized it unfairly...
...May 8], impartial as it was, must have sent many of your readers reeling...
...You apparently hold that, despite the technical difficulties posed by the uncon-trollability of the damage and carnage that can be caused by the use of nuclear weapons, some way can be found to use this very uncontrollability to render them comparatively harmless...
...Carlin discovers that his objective of promoting public health by widespread, semi-compulsory AIDS testing will not be furthered by the slanderous and homophobic accusations which fan the flames out of mistrust of the straight establishment (already rampant in the gay community...
...To the Editors: A state of stunned disbelief, I confess is hardly a useful prelude to rational discourse...
...the putative relationship between Western Christianity and a "rape-the-earth" engineering ideology...
...Many of us thank you for a splendid, even searing tour de force...
...The church may have survived World War II and its holocausts through ambiguities and hand-wringing expressions of concern, but no longer...
...Let the debate continue...
...While I hope many readers will formulate alternatives to deterrence theory, to do so one must discard the unexamined notion that "deterrence equals security...
...I believe a key reason why the editorial is unable to help extricate us from the nuclear threat is because it assumes that the Soviet Union — rather than nuclear war itself — is our greatest threat...
...And what right do we and the Soviets have, with 11 percent of the world's population, to maintain our danse macabre 428 while much of the world screams "Halt...
...We like to think that we have pioneered an excellent program for addressing precisely the issues Dr...
...historical tensions between engineering societies as independently professional vs...
...Escalation was not possible in 1945...
...JOE GOSSM Time to renounce Hollis, N.Y...
...Commonweal's readers should understand, however, that Mr...
...Hardly...
...soldiers, parents, children, and the unborn...
...Carlin may be dismayed to learn that the AIDS epidemic gives rise to strong arguments in favor of "gay rights" — a subject too involved for this letter...
...Next issue, stun us with a flash of scriptural truth...
...Either renounce all recourse to deterrence if one does not wish to acquiesce in a monstrous blood-lust and endorse complicity with the world, the flesh, and the devil...
...You are by no means saying that evil means justify a good end...
...And yet while the (Continued on page 428) 402 (Continued from page 402) bishops saw a historical opening which was ripe for prophetic peacemaking Commonweal seems somewhat relieved that, for them at least, the "new moment" has succumbed to the old real-politik...
...editorial [May 8J a breath of courage and clarity...
...The new age will not accommodate the moral philosophizing of the past or even our basic language structure...
...Dissent & truth Center Valley, Pa...
...Progress in combatting AIDS will require the cooperation of the gay community, a cooperation which can not be obtained by legal fiat anymore than sodomy can be criminalized out of existence...
...It seems to me that you have shifted your position on disarmament very significantly and are placing much too much reliance on deterrence...
...I venture that you are not endorsing om-nicide, whether in prospect, intent, or that most brutal method of all, the deployment of first-strike arsenals and ideology...
...RICHARD HAGER Elevated mockery Berea, Ky...
...Today those who argue for reduced military budgets are labeled as "soft on Communism...
...To the Editors: Your announced stand on the possible admissibility of nuclear deterrence ["Is Deterrence Moral...
...But in your May 8, 1987 editorial you write: "The logical conclusion of an anti-deterrent posture is unilateral nuclear disarmament...
...Help us to a clarity that will be an immense political gift in a lousy time...
...a great light dawned...
...Imagine my — mild, but real — irritation when I read the following: "So far these [programs in ethics for engineers] have remained voluntary projects — and not, it should be noted, projects for which engineering schools in Catholic universities are taking any real initiative...
...national security" (whatever that is...
...Like: Christians are not allowed to kill or to be complicit in killing...
...And what of the erosion of social spending and its unconscionable impact on the poor...
...In the meantime, public health will best be served by widespread, compulsory education and consciousness-raising...
...While one can understand such axioms being espoused by the military-industrial complex, it is startling to encounter it from a progressive Catholic bi-weekly...
...It is difficult to chronicle accurately and graphically the hardship that is visited upon gay people who have tested "positive" to the AIDS blood test...
...JOHN M. STAUDENMAIER, S.J...
...May 8] is an important piece which will elicit many thoughtful responses...
...While there may come a time when widespread AIDS testing will be defensible, that time is not yet upon us...
...Help us to a clear "no" in place of a crepuscular "maybe...
...To welcome diversity, invite criticism, serves to liberate truth and reflect even deeper clarities and awareness...
...You are not banishing a Scripture which commends loving enemies, blessing the persecutor, or giving one's life rather than taking (all or many) lives...
...The piece is laced with the rhetoric of responsibility, sometimes suggesting the Catholic peace pastoral of 1983: "Faced with a moment like the present, we are forced back to basics in moral as well as strategic terms...
...They are demonstrating, serious tongue in cheek, and trembling in heart, the dead end of Weinbergian, Novakian, Lehma-nian realpolitik...
...It behooves you to explore this new world of possibilities, since the use of nuclear force is inherently self-destructive...
...You do raise questions, but they are questions which you well know were answered once and for all in the fire storms of Hiroshima-Nagasaki...
...ROLAND LAIRD 430...
...Even in intent...
...DANIEL BERRIGAN, S.J...
...The assumption is that though this way is as yet unspecified, when or if it becomes specific it will be moral because ' 'The Challenge of Peace" has reaffirmed the just war doctrine...
...Please consider a few points: There is day by day an increasing array of non-nuclear deterrents to hostile intent, utilizing violent, somewhat violent, and even peaceful methods...
...An analysis of his "Sidestepping the Challenge of Peace...
...In possession...
...Have we become so conditioned to the high costs of deterrence that we are unable to envision more life-affirming alternatives...
...dependent on corporate employers...
...Through mouthfuls of unassimilable pen-tagonese, they want to show how the bishops, too, get stuck in the concrete of bunker casuistry, how the cover of "deterrence" covers (but not quite) the icy American intent of first-strike intent and weaponry...
...Catholic letters that took an unprecedented and symbolically positive stride forward, if but briefly, at Reykjavik...
...whistle-blowing as an ethical demand for the profession...
...Moreover, in light of the fact that there is no cure for AIDS and that education is presently the best defense against the spread of the disease, a costs/benefits analysis does not argue well in favor of Mr...
...Regardless of his opinions on the topic of gay rights, however, I sincerely hope that Mr...
...86) that combined with Orwellian maxims like ' 'preserving peace" and "deterring war," it "provided the intellectual and moral authority of a state religion, and the effect was just as stultifying...
...Yet, despite its vaguely populist and intellectually rigorous style, it is essentially a nuanced rationalization for the nuclear status quo, strangely unwilling to engage those who reject nuclear deterrence as the cornerstone of U.S...
...Carlin is right that the gay community is concerned about the fact that so-called public health steps will disproportionately affect gay people ["Not By Condoms Alone," March 13...
...They move among children, the aged and ill, street people...
...You are not helping Catholic .Christians move backward, where cold war shadows grow longer...
...May 8] and was felled, or nearly so...
...In deployment...
...jay allain Cut the hand-wringing Sante Fe, N. Mex...
...To a person with AIDS there is nothing more important than having the assurance of continued health care insurance...
...Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has termed this evasion of the reality of nuclear holocaust "psychic numbing...
...All freshmen engineers are required to take it, and we consider it a key part of the curriculum...
...Not useful, only inevitable...
...What does this actually mean...
...Must this not be figured in any discussion of a nation's security...
...Mitcham discusses...
...Carlin's recommendation...
...Indeed, as I shortly came to see, your language, callous and abstract as it seemed, was a courageous attempt to deny, even while it seemed to affirm, the 429 lethal jargon of legitimated mass murder...
...Refer to Hunthausen, Gumbleton, Day, orMerton...
...It is inevitable now...
...To the Editors: I read Carl Mitcham's fine survey of the engineering profession and its ethical concerns ["Schools for Whistle Blowers," April 10], wondering whether it would be helpful for the course I teach on such issues...
...Regarding nuclear deterrence, Michael MccGwire wrote in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Dec...
...You buttress your position by raising the synthetic issue of unilateral disarmament...
...Morality of deterrence New Haven, Conn...
...The raising of the issue seems to have been occasioned by Michael Gallagher's vehement, simplistic attack on the bishops' peace pastoral and the subsequent support for this attack articulated in your April 24 "Correspondence" pages...
...To the Editors: Your lead editorial, "Is Deterrence Moral...
...In America, being without a job means more than simply not being able to support yourself...
...There can be no "just" nuclear war because there can be no winnable nuclear war at all, as our unchurched leaders fully understand...
...Thank you for your work...
...It will be a new church, concerned with the rights of the innocent first, the preservation of particular freedoms and institutions second...
...Carlin's suggestion of widespread, semi-compulsory blood testing is not without real and serious consequences in the lives of their sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, and friends who just also happen to be gay...
...Given the above (my grasping your admirable fiction), and having cleared the ground by a stroke of literary skill, now give us the real editorial...
...To the Editors: I very much liked your "Is Deterrence Moral...
...Erich Fromm has written: "those who point to the political and psychological and moral consequences of such destruction are called 'unrealistic.'" Is it truly responsible to endorse nuclear deterrence without facing these other perspectives...
...Hence this letter, which claims, in gratitude, to have cracked your code...
...BRUCE M. RUSSETT Mere rationalization Northampton, Mass...
...As a lawyer representing gay persons with AIDS, I share this concern...
...or embrace an indefinite extension of deterrence if one would preserve our "freedoms and institutions of enormous significance" and escape "instabilities making nuclear war more . . . likely...
...WILLIAM A. BROWN Oh, pioneers Detroit, Mich...
...Their arguments take a strictly necessary form, elevated mockery to turn the mind in its dead socket...
...Consider the gap that must now exist between you and those of your allegiance who have gone all-out in their stand against nuclear war, to the extent of sacrificing their own futures by going to jail...
...January 19] and your May 8 editorial leaves the reader who is undecided about the use of nuclear weapons with the distinct impression that there are only two ways of resolving the problem...
...The course is not voluntary...
...Consider the fundamental question: Have we grown more secure while military expenditures grew from $116 billion to $282 billion, a 69 percent increase, under President Reagan...
...Chase Manhattan, Riverside Research, churches and hospitals and workers: "military and economic targets" in the cruel phrase...
...These editors . . . can shake us into a semblance of sanity...
...Invoke the peaceable scriptural thunderbolts of John McKenzie...
...The pope calls for a "moral about-face...
...It is regrettable that Commonweal has to be criticized for contributing to such a polarity in the church and the nation...
...To the Editors: In your November 7, 1986 editorial commenting on the unsuccessful Reykjavik meeting, you wrote: "It is this step-by-step approach to disarmament, recommended in both the Methodist and U.S...
...Say things liberating, outrageous, provocative...
Vol. 114 • July 1987 • No. 13
