August 30, 2012Dear Sir,Your newspaper had an article about two women who were convicted of importing cannabis and were sentenced to long jail terms. All of the worldwide laws demonising cannabis have resulted from the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, the first US law relating to the illegality of cannabis, which was passed because of the racist perjured testimony of the US Commissioner of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, on May 11, 1937, before the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee. The proposed law was opposed by Dr William Woodward, lobbyist for the American Medical Association; he testified that cannabis was a “harmless medicine” that “was available in packets at pharmacies and drug companies”, and “had appeared in the pharmacopoeia of approved medicines since 1870!”. (Cannabis has been used as a medicine since 2,800 BC; Emperor Shen-Tung called it “The Superior Elixir of Immortality”.)Anslinger committed perjury when he testified that cannabis was “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind”, and “was smoked by Hispanics, Filipinos, Negroes and entertainers; their satanic music, jazz and swing, is caused from smoking ‘marijuana’ (a Spanish slang word used by poor Mexican labourers who smoked its bud). When white women (like President Obama’s Irish mother?) smoke marijuana, they want to have sexual relations with Negroes (like President Obama’s black Kenyan father?).”The horror of miscegenation trumped medical science; the senseless war on one of God’s plants had begun. Because of a treaty proposed by US President Richard Nixon and, upon his urging, was adopted by most nations, millions of persons lives have been ruined worldwide. In my opinion, Bermuda should repeal this ineffective and cruel law criminalising this “harmless medicine”, the Chinese “Superior Elixir of Immortality”.In the second article relating to the use of religion to deny human rights, Bishop Lloyd Duncan “said he was categorically against legislation that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation”. He is totally ignorant of the long history of his own church’s toleration of gays, from its beginnings in the Greek part of the Roman Empire until about 1250AD; during that period, according to the 1982 book by the late Yale History Department Chairman, John Boswell, “Christianity, Tolerance, and Homosexuality”, Leviticus was ignored by the Christian church. Most Christian converts in the first century were Greek pagans; Plato, the founder of western philosophy, praised same-sex love in his “Symposium”, claiming that it was superior to opposite sex love, as did Aristotle, many of whose ideas are still supported by the Roman Catholic Church. Did the Christian God become homophobic in 1250AD? Is He indecisive?Bermuda Pastor Sylvia Hayward-Harris is correct in her many arguments in the article, including the one that “religious leaders were cherry-picking lines from the Book of Leviticus and taking them out of context”, and the one that Jesus “didn’t say anything about homosexuality”.In his second 1994 book, “Same-sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe,” Boswell found that the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches “sanctified” same-sex unions in “services that were similar to those for heterosexual unions”; the cover of his book shows a seventh century fresco of gay third century martyred lovers, Saints Serge and Bacchus, flanking Jesus Christ. I have visited their church, which the Istanbul tour book said “was the second most important church in Constantinople in the fifth century”. Leviticus also says that rebellious sons, and daughters who do not cry out when they are raped in the city should be executed, and it also forbids eating shrimp cocktails. Why doesn’t Bishop Duncan worry about shrimp cocktails and rebellious sons, as well as daughters raped in the city who do not cry out? Homophobia in the Christian church started in 1250AD because the newly-minted monarchs decided that gays were heretics. It’s time for conservative Christians, including Bishop Duncan, to end their homophobic ways and follow their God, Jesus.ROBERT W HOLDENVENZONRetired Professor of History, Cuyamaca CollegeSan Diego, California