April 19, 2004

Centralia Chronicle
P.O. Box 580
Centralia, Washington 98531

Dear Editors:

We are thankful that we live in a country with Constitutional 
guarantees of religiously liberty and free speech, in which we 
can all choose our own belief systems and call them anything we want.  
Trish Isley-Miller (letter, April 14) can define herself as a Christian 
and espouse a belief system in which “homosexuality” (and whatever 
she believes that word entails) is a “sin.”  Fortunately those same 
guarantees mean that she cannot prevent gay, lesbian, bisexual and 
transgender people from identifying themselves as Christians, Jews, 
Moslems, Buddhists, or members of any other faith tradition, nor can she 
control the membership policies of welcoming communities of faith that 
accept and affirm sexual and gender minorities just as they are.


Sincerely,
Barbara Lamond Purdom			
Christopher Purdom
Interfaith Working Group Coordinators