Furor Over GOP Memo on Foley

Is it any wonder that gays are verbally abused, physically attacked, even sometimes killed (“Record Level of Violence Against Gays Reported,” Part I, June 8) when national politicians and family newspapers use negative words when dancing around the issue of homosexuality? In considering unethical political conduct as reflected in your two front page articles and the editorial of June 8, it’s important to point out the mean-spirited sub-text against gay men and women implicit in your reporting and editorializing.

Everything is based upon the hackneyed assumption that being a gay person is bad per se. Your two articles as well as your editorial are chock-full of negative words-- disgusting , smear , mud , squalid , innuendo , bad taste, garbage --to describe a Republican memo falsely linking Foley with Frank to the perfectly ordinary and very human condition of homosexuality. There is not even a balancing quote from any gay rights activist.

What if the GOP memo had falsely alluded to race or religion in a negative way instead of sexual orientation? Would we have been flooded with the same negativity in reporting the event?

In your coverage of the Foley-Frank memo, nowhere did anyone say or write what needs to be said by political leaders and written by editorial writers: It’s OK to be a gay person!

Perhaps such open compassion will stop political hacks and other hatemongers from using homosexuality as a weapon in unethical attacks. It certainly will help reduce violence in our society against gay people.

MARSHAL A. PHILLIPS

Co-Chair, Gay & Lesbian

Police Advisory Task Force

Stonewall Democratic Club

Los Angeles