To the editor:
I’d like to list three reasons why Sen. Joe Manchin cannot, with integrity and in good conscience, endorse President Barack Obama for reelection:
1. President Obama is against coal. To endorse him is to betray our state.
2. President Obama doesn’t secure the blessings of liberty to our prosperity. To endorse him Manchin would violate his oath of office.
3. President Obama supports gay marriage. To endorse him goes against Manchin’s Catholic faith and the laws of nature and of nature’s God.
His decision should be simple, a “no brainer.”
— Bruce Barilla,
Bluefield, W.Va.
Anyone's religion must be left to his or her conviction and conscience with the right to exercise it as these may dictate. This right in its nature is an unalienable right because people's opinions, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of others. As such, religion serves no useful purpose for the issues raised in the editorial.
Let your christianity enter your politics now then be silent when mormon-republican politics goes against the tenets of your christian sect and those core values of West Virginia voters that have makes our state great.