We read state Rep. Brandi Bradley's column (July 14, 2023), “Being Pro-America is not about hating anyone,” and came away with a particularly strong sense of intentional misdirection and disingenuity.

The core misdirection is the portrayal by Bradley that the concepts of Hate, Religion and Freedom are somehow innately bound together, and not the result of conscious personal choices on her part.

Reinforcing this false construct is not new or even original. It's disingenuous. If it was new or original, we wouldn't see the same string of fake moral panics espoused across the country … anti-LGBTQ, anti-critical-race-theory, anti-public education. And there is little doubt this well-covered list will see new triggers as time goes on, because the goal is to keep us divided and off-center with disingenuity.

Let's Not Confuse Hate, Religion and Freedom ... let's not confuse truths with triggers.

HATE evolves out of every individual's moral decision-making, reinforced by the choice of group associations. When an elected official makes a decision, it's reasonable to push back in the name of democracy, especially when off-center ideology enters the frame. The personal choice to publicly huddle with ideological trigger organizations like Colorado Parents Advocacy Network and far-right think-tanks shows true personal motivation.

RELIGION is a personal choice until a local politician makes the decision to pull it in as a narrow set of convenient governance principles, to serve as a crutch for deeper motivations of exclusion and worse. Then, religion becomes a political trigger. History is full of bad outcomes when religion falsely serves as the basis for public decisions, leading to exclusion and even hate. There are many in our community who hold their religion in the highest order, but most are not engaged in religion as political cover. By the way, the Colorado Constitution disallows the mix of religion and public governance.

FREEDOM is the foundational concept to our American democracy. “All men are created equal” — we still have much to do to deliver the promise. Once thing is clear. Through our history, when public officials confuse their own self-righteousness with “God-given” power to define freedom — that's a trigger.

Friends, we would do well to understand the triggers, the purposeful redefinitions, for what they are — ideological misdirection and disingenuity coming from politicians and their associations.

Lloyd Guthrie

Roxborough Park