Letters to the Editor

Megan's bill

I am writing to ask for your support on a very important bill that will be given to our state legislators this year. The bill will amend Indiana's current seatbelt law that excludes vehicles registered as pickup trucks.

Indiana's current seat belt law does not require pickup truck drivers and passengers to wear a seat belt. Paying an extra $9 registration fee gets your SUV, van or station wagon classified as a truck, so drivers of these vehicles avoid the seat belt law as well that applies to car drivers.

This means that one of every four vehicles in Indiana have drivers and passengers that don't have to buckle up. To me this just doesn't make sense. The lives of people traveling in a truck, SUV, van and station wagon are just as important and precious as the lives of those traveling by car. Indiana's seat belt law should apply to all drivers and passengers regardless of the type of vehicle they are traveling in.

On Feb. 9, 2004 at 2:30 p.m., my twenty-four year old daughter, Megan Minix, was pronounced dead by the Coroner of Carroll County in the State of Indiana. My wife and I were driving to our younger daughter's gymnastics meet about an hour away from home. As we arrived at our destination, the cell phone rang. The person calling told my wife that the Sheriff's Department was trying to reach us because our daughter had been in an accident. We tried to call Megan's cell phone, but got no answer. Finally I got through to the sheriff and received the horrible news that Megan had been killed. The sheriff said that she was riding in a pick-up truck with a friend. He hit a patch of ice, lost control and rolled one and one half times. Megan was not wearing a seat belt. She was partially ejected and did not survive.

The day after Megan's funeral, I was informed about Indiana's Senate House committee hearing that was scheduled for the following Monday concerning Senate Bill 40 on the truck seat belt law. My family made arrangements to go to the hearing. I did not know any of the statistics on pick-up truck deaths. I just knew we had lost our daughter because she was not wearing a seat belt, and we could not just sit back and do nothing.

We live in a democracy where the power belongs to the people. We exercise our power through elected representatives. There is clearly a majority of Indiana drivers supporting the removal of the exclusion for trucks. This is not a law that the government is trying to push on us and take away our liberties. This is a law that a majority of Indiana citizens paying taxes support. It is time for the elected representatives of our state to quit playing political games and exercise the will of the people. Thank you.

Darrell Minix
Kokomo, Ind.

To find out how you can get involved, contact the Indiana Seat Belt Coalition by emailing Suzanne Crouch, "Teens Saving Lives, One Seat Belt at a Time" at scrouch1@evansville.net or by calling 812-867-6964.

Same gender marriage

Results of my research before leading a discussion group on the issue of same-gender marriages from DMA (Defense of Marriage Act, 1996) to MPA (Marriage Protection Act, 2004) and FMA (Federal Marriage Amendment).

As of Nov. 2, 2004, 49 states have adopted their own definition of marriage - "marriage is a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife." This conforms to the definition in the federal DMA and further protected in the federal MPA and is the legal definition recognized by the Federal government as a whole.

States rights to define and solemnize marriage are not to be violated by state supreme court judges or by federal judges. The Full Faith and Credit clause, when one state agrees to honor another state's edicts, does not apply at present.

IF we have an FMA, definitions of marriage will be adjudicated, and probably changed, by federal judges who could impose their definition on states who have already defined marriage in their own constitutions and could include the very types of marriage we are protected from at present - same gender, polygamy, poly-amorists, bigamy. Which raises the question: "Why do we need or want a federal constitutional amendment?"

As I see it, an FMA could actually give federal judges the power to do exactly what we do not want them to do: define marriage and thus nullify what states have already decided. Another question: "What would happen to clergy who are not allowed by their own denominations to perform illegal marriages now but who might be mandated by the federal government to do so under threat of penalty? To me, the FMA is a bad idea.

Edwin L. Clark
Geneva, Ind.

Last updated on 25 Apr 2008

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