Be thankful for wealth
Re: Why I vote grudgingly, Sept. 29

Andy Canivet demonstrates a remarkable failure to appreciate what it means to live in the industrialized world.

According to the CIA World Fact book, the life expectancy in Bangladesh is 61.3. Compared to a leisurely 79.8 in Ontario, the author should count himself lucky he has an extra 18 years of free time to spend with his friends and family, to say nothing of plentiful food and a place to live-items I think we can agree have at least something to do with a robust economy.

Andy has simply lapsed into fiction, stating flat-out that “some of the poorest countries on earth with the smallest economies still manage to provide food, clothing, shelter, and a reasonable amount of leisure time for everyone.” Really? Which countries are those?

If we take another look at good old Bangladesh, we will see that the infant mortality rate is a stunning 66 out of 1,000 live births, the literacy rate is barely 45%, and a solid 35% of the population lives below the poverty line. If this is the price one must pay for a slower pace of life, I will happily swallow my anti-depressants and join the ranks of the global economy. And so should you-you’ll live longer.

Sean Kirby

There goes the bride
Re: SAC same-sex marriage campaign a little queer, Sept. 23

So now all marriage is to be shucked? That’s at least what Paul Bowser has to say in his article on how same-sex marriage is an intolerable heresy so far as the dogma of equality is concerned. The reason is that, while the new marriage definition would include gays, it might still exclude other “domestic partnerships” and thus “implicitly support the notion that some relationships are better than others.” He doesn’t say what those “other” relationships are, but since none are better than any others, I guess he’s fighting for them all: the right of a dozen people to get married, the right of a father to marry his own daughter, the right of a spinster to marry her cats, the right of a monomaniac to marry himself, the right of the Dutch to marry kids when they finally succeed in lowering the age of consent… It’s a glorious vision, this. And those who disagree can just have the suffix “phobic” scotch-taped to the relevant sexuality from which they dissent. Sure we might become the kind of people that our ancestors used to tell fairy tales about to frighten their children, but who cares? I’m sure that that, too, springs from some pernicious “-ism.” Still, as someone looking forward to marriage, I just hope that Mr. Bowser won’t be too angry with me for thinking that marriage to my girlfriend might just be a “better relationship” than marriage to my gerbil.

David Elliot