I find it a bit disconcerting that we needed a headline to reassure students that professors defend the stance on the church’s endorsement of a gay rights ordinance in Salt Lake. I’m very glad that the church made this position, not because I think it will change the perspective of non-members (who I doubt will have their minds changed unless we were to reverse our position on gay marriage), but because I hope that the stance the Church has taken will remind LDS people of Gordon B. Hinckley’s words when he said, “Our opposition to attempts to legalize same-sex marriage should never be interpreted as justification for hatred, intolerance, or abuse of those who profess homosexual tendencies” (Ensign, Nov. 1999, 52).

I am sorry that you are so insecure with your womanly independence that you feel the need to be offended by young men’s attempts at politeness and respect. I am sorry that you are offended at how we are taught by our leaders, including the prophet, to treat women. We are taught that we owe a debt of gratitude to women. As mothers, wives and daughters, just for being born a woman, you provide invaluable service to human kind, and as co-creators with our Heavenly Father, deserve our admiration and respect. I am sorry you feel that our admiration and respect of your divine calling as a woman is insulting. It isn’t men thinking that you are incapable of opening a door, and I have never heard any church leader even suggest that women belong anywhere but beside men as equal companions.

There’s something about love, vampires and screaming teenage girls that doesn’t quite lend itself to a soundtrack that could be enjoyed by both the male and female genders. However, I’m a guy and I am publicly admitting that the “Twilight: New Moon” soundtrack is ridiculously good.

I know what you might be thinking, but hold your horses and give it a chance.

BYU culture struggles to maintain the outdated and patriarchal views that disguise feminine repression through seemingly selfless acts of self-proclaimed “gentlemen.” While walking through campus, I do not see any damsels in distress.

I see competent, intelligent, professional women that do not need a man to hold the door, pay for a date or even present a shiny ring in the traditional manner.

I have hands, thank you. I do not feel flattered when you awkwardly hold the door open for helpless little me. I also have money.

Women who allow men to pay for them on a date are prostituting their worth not only in the relationship, but also in a capitalistic society that strives to provide equal opportunities.

Isaac Higham’s letter (“Divisive viewpoint,” Nov. 12) is a classic example of false propaganda by the LGBT community.

First, nobody is trying to stop the LGBT lifestyle. There is no law banning homosexuality and they are free to do as they want with their lives.

Secondly, if the analogy of the LGBT people as pioneers is not offensive, it is at least inappropriate at best. The pioneers traveled thousands of miles away from their homes to escape persecution and death. Many died or suffered terrible hardships of hunger, fatigue and cold. The LGBT group walked for two hours, downhill on a paved surface and then returned home. Hardly an event of the same caliber.

I reject the idea that the LGBT community suffers any immense, systematic discrimination. LGBT as a whole are well tolerated, and it is simply not true.

If you didn’t sign the petition in support of the Women’s Research Institute Thursday at their demonstration, consider yourself lucky because it would have been a huge waste of time.

The rally was intended to spread more lies and rumors about why the WRI was dissolved.

For example, their Facebook page does little to explain the real issues, saying that “there is deep symbolic meaning in the elimination of the WRI, deeper than a lot of us would like to know.”

I’m sure many of us would like to know what that “deeper meaning” actually is because from what I can tell the reasons for eliminating the WRI have been made explicitly clear.

To the author of the Nov. 10 editorial, “Politicians and the press”: Giving your readers a false sense of importance, and thereby a false sense of reality, is just as severe a disservice as failing to cover the issues they care about.

The Daily Universe should be careful that they do not feel a sense of entitlement to attention from local politicians. The students who care about having their voice on “student issues” represented in local government care a lot and care loudly, but the vast majority of students do not care at all.

The acts of graciousness the editorial praised — candidates remembering reporters’ names and inviting photographers into their homes — are little more than small-scale publicity stunts (something the opinion editor condemned in her viewpoint on the same page).