Alligator Online

The recent article by Jake Ramsey regarding the Ave Maria community was so full of flaming generalizations and gross exaggerations that some clearing up is well due.

There is one point that was agreeable and that is that the growing trend toward "self-segregation" is not positive.

In fact, it is a very good indicator of our nation's increasingly amoral state and the drive of many to isolate themselves from it.

From a religious standpoint, including a Catholic standpoint, self-segregation is not a positive thing. We are to be in the world, not out of the world, turning our backs on it.

However, there are those out there, with whom I can sympathize, who find it so difficult to lead spiritual and fulfilling lives amidst the decaying moral climate of our country that separation is the only viable option.

If they're happier that way, more power to them. They're not hurting any of us.

As Ramsey said, there are many similar religious communities across the country, particularly in New England, and they have been there for many years with no problems.

This is, of course, a free country, and Tom Monaghan can spend his money as he pleases.

He isn't forcing anyone to inhabit his town, and he isn't plotting to spread his brand of Catholicism across America.

That happened more than two centuries ago.

I find it disconcerting that Ramsey considers the illegalization of pornography to be such a vice to the Founding Fathers' ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and such a threat to our country. A recent psychological study provided evidence that pornography addictions are physiologically real and have already proven to be detrimental to families and relationships across the nation. Porn should be just as illegal as crack and pot for how harmful it is, not to mention how disgusting.

It is equally disconcerting that Ramsey seems to consider exposure to the corruptions of this world to be not just an opportunity, but a positively reinforcing necessity of life.

There are, thankfully, many people in this country who do not think as he does and believe that it is better to stay away from such vices as pornography, abortion and contraception, sexual promiscuity, drugs, violence and the like.

Believe you me that true happiness does not come from these.

On a final note, it is an extremely gross mistake to attribute disregard for civil liberties to a so-called "ultraconservative" or otherwise just ordinary Christian trend.

Wasn't Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister, a civil rights pioneer? Weren't the writers of the Bill of Rights - themselves Christians - pioneering civil rights? Think about it.

If anything, this "heathen" world, as it was tritely referred to, is the one that's enveloping this country, not the other way around.

Anthony M. Piferrer is an aerospace engineering freshman.