Sin or no sin, to pay money as a faithful Christian to personally see this film would be the equivalent of paying to watch someone defecate on the cross of Christ.

No thanks. Send a stronger message: Go to a different movie on Friday, May 19. Show that you are tired of Christianity being the last acceptable area of prejudice in this country.

Everyone complains about high taxes, but Dave Heineman wins (submitted a 14.2 percent increase in state budget over the next two years). Everyone complains about corporate welfare but Pete Ricketts wins (big business guy himself). Everyone complains about illegal immigration, but neither one of these guys is going to help.

We can’t get an educated, well-intentioned citizen who isn’t in big business to run for office because we again voted to pay state legislators less than minimum wage for their time (Amendment 1 failed).

I suggest we pay these people and city council members $50,000 a year plus benefits. Only then will a common middle-class citizen be able to have representation at the state and local level. And only then will we be able to get someone in Washington who represents us.

Our president and the GOP in both the Congress and the Senate would like you to think that Bush’s tax cuts have helped us. They haven’t. The middle class has borne the brunt of the costs.

I know it has had an adverse effect on my own personal balance sheet. From the figures advertised, I owe the government $158,000, as do each of you as well as your children. How are we going to pay our share? For the more affluent Americans, that are benefiting from the tax cuts, it’s no big deal. They are saving way more than that every year on their taxes. Every year!

We must contact them now. Let them know if they want to continue in their present positions they must balance the budget. Tell them that time’s a wasting and there’s an election coming up. Tell them it’s been done in the past. Tell them it’s their last chance. Tell them to do it for your kids.

“I’m going to let my children play …” is what writer Helaine Olen said in her recent column titled “Meet you at the sandbox — after class.” Olen seems to suggest we reduce the demands on and structuring of children’s time. I agree and believe educators need to hear the same message.

Olen’s column struck a chord with me because I had just returned from an early childhood educators’ conference and heard Dr. Marjorie Kostelnik (UNL dean) speak about teachers’ responsibility to be play advocates.

It seems that with “No Child Left Behind” policies and our society’s competitive attitude, many parents and teachers are forgetting that childhood is a journey, not a race. For a time, everyone was thinking about how “everything they needed to know they had learned in kindergarten.” Now even kindergartners don’t have time for many of those life lessons.

Child development specialists know that children learn best through self-initiated play, not adults talking at them. Therefore, parents and teachers need to balance structured and unstructured time for our children. Children need time outdoors to explore, experience and move.

The book mentioned in Olen’s column, “Last Child in the Woods,” is a great reference for parents and teachers who are looking to find that balance in today’s world. The author, Richard Louv, makes the case that children’s lack of unstructured time and time to connect with nature is even creating a health crisis.

As schools are cutting recess in the race for instructional time, childhood obesity and diabetes are rising at alarming rates. What a price to pay for children who can read and compute numbers by age 5 but may never make it past middle age.

Now, aren’t the city leaders of Lincoln proud? They have made a bypass on the eastern edge of the city! Of course it goes through residential areas, past 11 churches, schools, has stoplights, is crossed by bike paths, school crossings and pedestrian crossings. And they call it the Truck Route.

This is 84th Street, not bypass, not truck route. What is going to happen when one of the speeding trucks or cars does not get stopped at the lights?

We have lived in many cities, some much smaller than Lincoln, that have a complete circle around them and also a route through the city that puts you across town in just a few minutes and does not endanger residents, school children and churchgoers.

Lincoln has always been 25 years behind and I guess will continue to be since they still allow people to buy up properties that they should have held years ago for a real bypass for this city. They continue to let people build everywhere but have no routes to move traffic from one side of the city to the other, around it or over it safely.

Before Leon Satterfield starts misapplying certain Bible passages (“How do we tolerate the intolerable?” LJS, May 8), he should consider other references that apply to the subject of homosexuality. Otherwise, Satterfield will never salvage clarity from his confusion.

This might help. In regard to human sexuality, God talks about one man and one woman becoming one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Jesus perfectly applies that Old Testament passage to the sanctity of marriage and family life (Matthew 19:4-6). The apostle Paul refers to creation and its natural order when he writes against homosexuality (Romans 1:18-27).

The apostle Peter clarifies how these passages should be properly applied when he says: “[God] is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

This is cache, read story here