The November/December issue is a delight. The revised layout, the new features, and most of all, the articles on social justice, study circles, and the UUA Principles and Purposes really convey the dynamic and vital sense of our association.

I am amused and bothered by the use of the word "soul" on the cover of the November/December issue ("Five Global Trends to Challenge the Soul"). UUs seem to avoid the "God" word and so do I because the word has too many different meanings. Now I notice "soul" being bantered about. David Hume and the Buddha taught that neither logic nor experience gives any reason to believe in a soul.

I feel obliged to respond to the barrage of strange responses to my article, "From the Mouths of Babes," ("Reflections," September/October). The article dealt with my experience at a high school choir awards banquet where I quietly but firmly chided a female student at the table next to ours who repeatedly, and in a very audible voice, made vulgar and inappropriate remarks about students going to the stage, suggesting they were promiscuous or homosexual. The words included "ho," "slut," and "gay," among others. Because my son was due to receive an award, I did not want to hear the same rude speculation directed at him. I turned to her, still seated, and said that I wanted her to stop and why. She chose to react by going off to the girl's restroom and crying for the rest of the 90-minute program.

The four letter writers disagreed and proceeded to accuse me of "eavesdropping," "politically correct thuggery," and contradicting UU principles and the democratic principles of freedom of speech. One writer said my article made him "sick to my stomach. He should apologize to the young woman." Another writer imagined me to be "a big angry man." Are only small women allowed to speak out against vulgar language, sexism, and homophobia?

The primary reason my wife and I joined the UUA was because of its longstanding policy of promoting positive attitudes toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people and for fighting homophobic initiatives of the religious right. We are the parents of two sons, one gay and one straight.

Our gay older son, a young adult, has been a missing person for more than four years. A handsome, charming young man of many gifts and talents, he also has been emotionally troubled throughout his life because of reactions to his sexual orientation. When he was a teenager, his biological mother (not my wife) evicted him from her house because she could not accept his sexual orientation or continue to deal with his emotional problems. My wife and I are convinced that society's rejection of him as a gay person was one reason he ran away from his problems.

Since my son's disappearance, I have been increasingly angry at the way gay people are treated by the rest of the world. Knowing the agony that my son went through growing up, I have adopted a no-tolerance policy of homophobic comments, whether made purposefully, casually, or in ignorance. This does not mean that I go around looking for confrontation, but it does mean I speak up when the occasion arises. There is no interference with other people's right to speak. I simply tell them that I want them to stop. It is their choice how they react.

The student was not recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of every person; I exercised my own right of conscience and spoke up. Sometimes in our search for equity and compassion, we also have to mete out a little justice.

There is no reason for anyone -- big or small, male or female, old, middle-aged or young -- to hesitate when standing up to homophobic remarks or any other form of bigotry.

The Rev. Mike Young ("Commentary: The Drug War's Failure," November/December) states "heroin and morphine continue to be withheld from terminally ill patients, even when nothing else successfully controls their pain." This is incorrect. When my mother was diagnosed as terminally ill with lung cancer at 94, she was given carefully worked out dosages of both cocaine (for her cough) and morphine (for the pain). The medical community routinely uses morphine and many other addictive drugs to relieve pain. Although I am an advocate for the legalization and therefore more easily controlled distribution of drugs, this glaring error makes the entire article suspect.

Like many other UUs, I am concerned about our country's campaign finance system. John Buehrens put it well in "Horizons" (November/December): "In a democracy public forums shouldn't belong only to the wealthy and special interests."

It was therefore with some chagrin that I came across a full-page ad paid for by "The Campaign to Elect William Sinkford," and a smaller ad touting Diane Miller for UUA President. Each ad was eye-catching and slickly designed. Each campaign has its own Web site and, clearly, supporters with money.

This feels like a violation of our principles. I propose that candidates for UUA office receive a given amount of free space in UU World to express their views and a page on the UUA Web site, but that paid advertising be banned.

Neil Chethik's "Global Issues" (November/December) describes five issues that call for work by social activists. The predominant tone is one of gloom, in marked contrast to an article in the November/December Utne Reader that describes "Five Signs of the Coming Revolution." The five signs are a resurgence of citizens' movements in our country and worldwide; the maturing of our population; growing resistance to corporate control of our lives; increasing interest in spiritual growth; and young people's desire for less violence and hate, more cooperation, true democracy, and connections to people all over the world.

Nike did not invent child labor. But it made child labor relevant to us (since we wear the products of their labor) and enabled us to help change a situation halfway around the world through legal sanctions and boycotts. Our efforts should focus on extending legal protections to women, children, and the environment, not on destroying the means that make those protections possible.

Stopping legal and technological progress would only condemn the Third World to unspeakable misery, women and children to continued enslavement, and the environment to unfettered degradation.

A picture accompanying Neil Chethik's interesting article depicted ominous-looking nuclear cooling towers -- spewing harmless water vapor. On the same page, global warming is attributed partially to fossil fuel use. Nuclear power is part of the solution, not the problem. Nuclear plants discharge neither carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas), sulfur dioxide (an acid-rain contributor), nor ash particulates. They even emit less airborne radiation than is found in the smoke from boilers fueled by coal. Nuclear power provides 80 percent of the total electric power needs of France, where the picture was taken. Its citizens enjoy some of the cheapest electricity in Europe as well as cleaner air.

These pictures present a shortcut to actual thinking. They are pretty and dramatic, but they contradict the text, which stresses the need to investigate issues before climbing on board.

A salute to UU Meredith Burke for her reminder in the "Global Issues" article that excessive immigration is the driving force behind the rampant population growth in our nation. Lately, our fellow UUs have become increasingly aware that continuing to open our borders will only exacerbate the degradation of our environment and quality of life and do little to relieve the suffering of most of humanity.

A call for a return to pre-1965 limits on immigration is not an attack on immigrants. We simply cannot cram more people into a finite area with finite resources without profoundly adverse consequences. Other advanced nations recognize this. Ours has yet to face reality.

I have a difficult time accepting that Meredith Burke, a "UU activist," actually believes that one key to population control is to control immigration. For the earth's population as a whole, immigration results in no net change of population. If one considers the implications of immigration more deeply, Burke's view appears incredibly intolerant. Does Burke believe that people immigrate for fun? The majority of immigrants come to America for the improved living conditions -- the chance for fairness, justice, dignity, and democracy. I applaud Sanford Cloud. The racial and religious shift that will result from immigration will present a test for our UU tenets of tolerance and celebration of diversity.

Worldwatch Institute president Lester Brown is wrong that "the best way to reduce population growth" is to supply women "with birth control devices." The best way to reduce population is to have all boys get safe, virtually painless, reversible vasectomies. When a grown man really wants to raise a family, his vas deferens can be reconnected for that purpose.

We activists on the first Earth Day in 1970 sought to stabilize the US population in order to reduce both our contribution to world pollution and our resource demands upon other nations. Since 1970 two things have changed: the US population has increased from 200 million to 275 million and the source of population growth has changed from births to native-born women to immigration and births to immigrants. Neither adds to our carrying capacity nor makes it easier for a nation with less than 5 percent of the world's population to reduce its 25-percent share of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Thanks to Warren Ross for the great article about our UU principles ("Shared Values," November/December). I'm cutting out the beautiful texts and pasting them on decorative paper for my family's wall.

Warren Ross reports that Beacon Press and the religious education department use the Principles and Purposes to dictate the publications they develop. The UU Church in Waterloo, Ontario, recites them in worship. I find this very disturbing. The preamble to the Principles and Purposes makes it clear that the document is a covenant among congregations, not individuals. When the Principles are printed in the hymnal and recited in services, our backsliding into creedalism is complete.

I find the Principles themselves lacking in substance, which is to be expected when one does theology by committee. Lex Crane's quasi-kabbalistic interpretation demonstrates the convoluted lengths one needs to go to in order to extract any meaning out of them. If we invested half the time we spend parroting the Principles and Purposes studying the writings of Adams, Skinner, Wieman, or Hart-shorne, then Unitarian Universalism would have some serious meat to it.

The Principles and Purposes have become the Unitarian Creed. They are not an adequate summation of our religion, nor do they come close to the "depths of human experience." Our tradition of free thought and non-creedalism has been violated.

The November/December issue ("UU News: Welcoming Congregation Milestone") announced that 25 percent of UU congregations have completed the Welcoming Congregation program. We have analogous news from the Heart of Dixie. In November, 60 percent of the voters in Alabama chose to remove the prohibition against interracial marriage from our state constitution, which the media treated as a point of pride. We were saddened, however, by the lack of overwhelming voter support for the removal of the prohibition.

We had the same reaction to the news in UU World. we naively thought the of Welcoming Congregations percentage would be much higher. Maybe congregations are like voters. Some believe the right things quietly, but can't be bothered with making it official.

The steps in the Welcoming Congregation process and the subsequent certification do matter. We see the difference they have made and continue to make in the entire life of our congregation and as a visible statement for all who enter our doors. We hope that the next tally will show that many more of our congregations are "voting" publicly on this issue.

I seem to have missed something in "Living the Faith: The Seventh Principle Car" (November/December): the price. As a retired person on a limited income, I want to know how long it would take me to purchase one.

When I read the story "C*UUYAN Picks Justice Coordinator" ("UU News," November/December), I felt 14 years younger. The story identified the Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network, which serves UUs ages 18 to 35, as a "youth" organization. Lumping young adults in with youth shows disrespect for the thousands of UUs who are working to make our denomination more welcoming to young adults and to UUs of all ages.

The essay "Two Cheers for Democracy" mentioned by John Buehrens ("Horizons," November/December) is by E. M. Forster and not George Orwell and can be found in a volume of the same title.

corrections In the January/February article on the relationship between the UUA and the Rissho Kosei-kai Buddhists ("Soul Mates"), the caption for the photograph on page 39 did not properly identify Guji Yamamoto, who is the chief Shinto priest of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine. (The caption on the Web edition of the article has been corrected.)

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