Your letters: When is a secular organisation not one?

Ken Orr: Does Right To Life have an identity crisis?

Not secular

I was surprised to read Ken Orr's letter of February 24 and his protest over the "separation of church and state".

Mr Orr's opinion pieces in your paper are said to be by him as a spokesman for Right to Life. He is also its current secretary and a life member.

This tiny Christchurch-based splinter of the former SPUC states publicly, "We are a secular organisation" in "About Us" on its website.

Mr Orr should either not advance his personal religious views as if they were the policy of a secular organisation, or use his status to cause it to adopt the singular religious opinion which he clearly holds.

HUGH RENNIE QC
Wellington

A peaceful end

The passing of Lecretia Seales was appalling — nothing like that should ever be allowed to happen again.

All Lecretia Seales wanted was a peaceful death at the time of her choosing. It was her life. The mode of her passing was as cruel as it was unnecessary, and the law and medical professions failed her shamefully.

We all try to live a good life. We all have to face death, and would all like to die in as peaceful and dignified a fashion as possible.

People who die in their sleep are generally reckoned to be the lucky ones. So — what is this sleep jazz? Well, at age 89-and-a-half years, I have fallen off to sleep more than 32,667 times. It was almost always so very peaceful that I didn't know I was gone.

The lives we have are our lives. All thinking people want choice, and it should not be necessary to fly to Switzerland to exercise that choice. Neither should my beloved wife spend the rest of her life in jail for the "crime" of assisting suicide for merely holding my hand.

The present state of the law is utterly unacceptable to the great majority of thinking people.

F G and L M ROSE
Springvale

Guns at school

Yes, give guns to the teachers. Give them to the kids, too. You can't be too safe.

NOEL SHEPHERD
Whanganui

Armed teachers

When my parents decided to emigrate, thank God they chose Aotearoa and not America.
The latest nonsense from that country is Mr Trump's decision to arm school teachers.

Being a teacher myself, I imagine it won't be long, if it does happen, before some teacher, like us all, has a bad day in class. Bang, bang, bang!

Then I suppose Mr Trump will ask for all students to be armed.

There will be no fisticuffs behind the bike sheds. No, but there will be major battle once again at the O.K. Corral.

J COOGAN
Whanganui

Hammer gone

My wife, Venus, and I were approached by two young males asking if they could help us with any jobs.

This would not cost anything (free, in other words). So I asked them to cut a few branches off a tree. Venus provided lunch for them and gave them a bag of peaches to take home.

After lunch they went home and came back the following day to tidy up, then asked for $20, which I paid. They then departed.

Later I discovered my claw hammer was missing. I really need it.

HUGO GADSBY
Whanganui