I must take issue with the assertion by the Glasgow Daily Times, as reprinted in the Bowling Green Daily News on Monday, that state legislators need to answer the survey by Glasgow’s Gethsemane Baptist Church.

The editorial couched the issue in terms of citizens having &#8220the right to question their leaders” and blasted state Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, for calling on her fellow legislators not to answer the survey, containing the single question, &#8220Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.”

The Daily Times may disagree with Stein’s point that the survey amounts to intimidation and an unconstitutional religious test.

However, anyone who is Jewish or Muslim, agnostic or atheist, would see the obvious intimidating effect of being asked the most basic Christian question in survey form by a group belonging to the dominant Christian religion.

In these politically polarized times, it is naive to think that such a public survey of lawmakers would not be used by the exclusively Christian religious right to jerk legislators into line with their agenda.

Religion should be a personal matter that reflects itself in how a person lives his/her life. It should not be a litmus test for public service or policy; witness the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka that protests our soldiers’ funerals because it perceives governmental &#8220tolerance” for homosexuals. I believe this survey would be used as a litmus test for serving in the state legislature.

Don E. Thomason

Dunbar

State has no right to confiscate property

During my lifetime, the United States of America was held by the rest of the world as the center of hope and beacon of light for freedom, liberty and democracy.

Our major focal point – our freedoms – has always been our insistence on legal &#8220presumption of innocence” for anyone accused of a crime.

You recently reported on a bill before the legislature which would enable the government to confiscate any property at all belonging to a person suspected of being a drug dealer.

In as much as this person is legally considered not guilty until convicted at a trial, what right does the commonwealth have to deprive him of his property? Just because the federal government is trying to cut costs and reduce the size of the federal budget by eliminating some funding for local drug task forces doesn’t justify seizing the property of a technically innocent person.

Ruth Wohlfeil

Bowling Green