LETTERS: COCKFIGHTING FAN SAYS VOTE NO

To the editor:

I am sure that by now you are aware the Missourians Against Cockfighters got enough signatures on its petition to put our fate to a statewide vote. I feel like we are in 1903 and have no rights to decide what we as taxpaying Americans can do with our own lives. I feel like a slave being told what to do and when to do it.

With the petition, our constitutional rights are being violated, and the voting public will be deciding our fate all right, but what right do they have to decide what it is that I do with my life? If they choose not to participate, then that is their choice. But it is also my right to watch, participate, raise, cut, trim, fight, feed, love and own a gamecock. I wish they would have tried to stop George Washington or Abe Lincoln from fighting chickens. They might have been beheaded.

I see people every day who make choices. If they don't agree with my love for cockfighting, that's OK. It doesn't matter to me if they agree with what I do or not. But MAC is making my business its business, and that is not right. What I do is no one's business. My rights are to do what I want as long as it's legal. And cockfighting is, so why are they trying to change it? If they don't like it, they don't have to have anything to do with it.

On the same ballot, under exemptions, are the words "Prohibit rodeo practices currently sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association." Well, if I am reading that right, that means all of the saddle clubs and all the Friday-Saturday night roping will be illegal also.

All I know is I love cockfighting. This is just another way for our rights as free, fun-loving, work-every-day-to-pay-bills, over-18, voting adult American to be taken away. I don't know about the rest of you, but this is getting pretty old to me.

There seem to be bigger problems than chickens in this world. Child abuse, poverty, drug abuse and the homeless seem more important. If MAC would have used the time and money to help stop real problems, no telling what they could have accomplished. But MAC would rather spend its time and energy on trying to stop a chicken from doing what comes naturally and putting the everyday problems on the back burner.

Use your power to vote in November. Before long we might not even be able to do that any more. Vote no on Proposition A. Save what rights we have left.

MARSHA NORRIS

Winona