Readers write for Sunday, July 25

What a surprise -- another sky-is-falling social commentary from Katherine Kersten ("Gay-marriage efforts build, ominously," July 18). I wonder if Kersten did a little field research before warning us of the dire consequences of the gay-marriage movement. Did she travel to the hinterlands of Iowa, Massachusetts and Connecticut to see firsthand the destruction that gay marriage hath wrought there? Did she speak with the droves of unemployed wedding photographers who lost their jobs for refusing to photograph same-sex weddings? Did she console pastors of churches who have lost their tax-exempt status for failing to provide same-sex wedding ceremonies? The American people are learning that there's nothing ominous about progress, Ms. Kersten.

GARY J. FREITAS, WACONIA

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It must be very sad to walk in Kersten's shoes and to know that there is a gay or lesbian person around every corner waiting to destroy your way of life. As a heterosexual man in a predominantly GLBT church, I have trouble squaring my experience with the characterizations Kersten provides. The lesbian couple who adopted a child from a failed heterosexual relationship has never looked scornfully at me or my wife or children. And I can't recall ever feeling threatened by the views of those I worship with on Sundays. But there's probably something I am missing in their hidden agenda.

GREG OWEN, MINNEAPOLIS

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Since Kersten is so concerned about protecting marriage, she should consider promoting a ban against heterosexuals marrying. After all, that's where the 50 percent divorce rate is.

Kudos to Nick Coleman for debunking the absurd allegations from Minnesota Majority and Gov. Tim Pawlenty that illegal votes from felons tipped the outcome of the Franken-Coleman Senate race ("Felons flipped an election? Unbelievable," July 18).

It's worth mentioning that sniping former Sen. Norm Coleman commented that even though he is "not looking back," he has felt obliged to term Franken the "accidental senator."

Coleman apparently needs to be reminded that if ever there was an accidental senator, it was him. Few people would argue that he would have ever been elected had it not been for the tragic death of Paul Wellstone.

GENE CASE, ANDOVER

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True to form, he also attacks the organization Minnesota Majority, which after painstaking, documented research, presented evidence to the secretary of state and attorney general's office. Neither followed through.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of documented fraudulent addresses used by "voters" in the Senate election.

The point is that the Coleman-Franken race was not decided by votes, but by the political agenda of supposedly objective, nonpartisan state officers and their offices. Nick Coleman's column is simply another volley of smoke and fog to obscure that fact.

JIM BENDTSEN, RAMSEY

James P. Lenfestey was thorough and convincing in his commentary rebuttal of global-warming skeptics ("The truth: Still there, still inconvenient," July 19). How climate science has became so political is the topic of another column. What is clear is that the talk-radio voices have succeeded in hijacking the debate by claiming that there's no proof that man-made changes to our atmosphere are causing warming. The pertinent issue, the one about which there is no debate, is that we are, in fact, changing the atmosphere of our planet. It's the only atmosphere in the universe known to support life, and we are tampering with it. That is hardly a course of action that can be called wise, responsible or conservative.

Thank you for publishing the July 19 front-page article "Top Secret America grows out of control" by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin from the Washington Post.

It's so important that the American public be educated about the waste and extravagance of our hard-earned tax dollars in the name of providing us with "security."

How much are we willing to spend, and how expansive do we want our security system to grow, before we say "enough"? The top-secret world created by our government will become entrenched just like the military-industrial complex did, and it will become impossible to control, consuming more and more of our tax dollars and not really providing any security, but just stepping all over itself.

BARRY RIESCH, ST. PAUL

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It should have added that after nine years, they still don't know where Osama bin Laden is.