LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: FOR YEARS WE'VE BEEN DANCING THE MAY POLE WHILE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS WERE FORBIDDEN?

To the Editor:

I've been watching the paper carefully, but the big guns have been conspicuously silent.

I'm referring to the article "Students dance May Pole for last time" in Saturday's edition. The sixth-grade teacher admitted knowing that the dance is traditionally a "pagan fertility dance" and then quickly added: "Of course. we don't use it that way."

My question is, where are the citizens of Cape who decry prayer and other forms of religion entering our public schools? Where are those who threatened the school board with a law suit if they dared go through with a school-sponsored baccalaureate?

This silent hypocrisy is deafening. How have we gone through the years not allowing the greater tradition of the Ten Commandments hanging in our classrooms, in favor of a pagan fertility dance with obvious religious connotations? Why is it in order for paper witches to hang on walls at Halloween, which is a satanic holiday, but unthinkable for a picture of Jesus to be seen, who died for the sins of all mankind?

Can it be that the watchdogs of liberty, who champion the idea of separation of church and state in the name of religious freedom, are exhibiting a double standard? Can it be that they only wish to extricate all forms of Christianity from before the eyes of the next generation?

FRED POSTON

Cape Girardeau