I am writing in response to Mark Hotaling’s letter to the editor

(Nov. 20). Mr. Hotaling chastised The Collegian’s support of the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decisions to overturn a

state law banning same sex marriages (Our View, Nov.19).

We live at a time when extreme elements in our society are

attempting to sell the idea that everyone in this country should

have equal rights and that it is inappropriate (at the least) to

discriminate against people based upon skin color, religious

beliefs, gender or sexual preference. Mr. Hotaling wrote a rather

impressive piece attacking The Collegian’s stance that everyone,

gay and straight, should have the right to marry.

In addition, he attacked the “…radical homosexual lobby…”

and those who support them. Some might have thought that Mr.

Hotaling’s piece was a bit incoherent, illogical, ignorant, and

hateful. Not me. Personally, I find it refreshing that Mr. Hotaling

does not blindly follow the rhetoric of those extremists who want

equal rights for everyone. Why should we, as a society, allow those

who are not mainstream to live their lives with all the rights and

advantages that most of us have? We all know that homosexuals are a

very real threat to the concept of family in this country

(something that the scholarly Mr. Hotaling discusses) and, if left

unchecked, are willing and capable of destroying everything that is

good (God?) and holy in this great nation of ours. Mr. Hotaling, I

take my hat off to you. Your ignorance and hatefulness can serve as

a model for racists, sexists, homophobes, and everyone else who

despises the idea of equal rights for everyone.

Todd Wojtowicz

Graduate student, ecology

I, like many I know, am appalled by The Collegian’s decision to

support the recent ruling in favor of gay marriage in

Massachusetts. I don’t see how you could possibly justify

supporting the gay community’s fight for equal rights! Do you think

that marriage is something just anyone can have? Why is America

suddenly all about being fair and open-minded? Homosexuals may be

born that way but they don’t have to enjoy their life by acting out

on their sexual impulses. That’s a heterosexual-exclusive

activity.

Why can’t they just live a miserable life of deprivation? If

someone wants to be skinny, they stop eating fast food, right? So

if someone gay wants to be normal, they should just stop being gay.

It’s true that I am morally superior to just about everyone and I

like to think that people care about what ignorant people like me

have to say in the world, but that’s besides the point.

Basically, it looks like The Collegian has lost another reader

with all of its attempts to promote equality. I’ll be getting all

of my current events elsewhere, like on the walls of bathroom

stalls or out of propaganda booklets written by other intolerant

individuals. And as a side note, if anyone is interested in forming

a group that stands against other moral deviancies like practicing

religion, reading, volunteering or eating Hot Pockets, please feel

free to contact me.

Caleb Aldrich

Junior, English

In response to Mark Hotaling’s letter expressing embarrassment

of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on same-sex

marriages.

As long as you are going to say that you are right because

Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece says so, perhaps you should look at

what his own wife said on the issue. In 1996, in response to a

Maine ballot asking voters if they wanted to repeal a law that

prohibited discrimination against gay people, Coretta Scott King

released a letter saying that, “Like Martin, I believe you cannot

stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to

others.”

What you and other conservatives across the nation are doing is

just that. You are attempting to claim that only people like

yourself should be granted equal rights.

In one instance you say it is wrong to equate homosexuality to

race, but then in another instance you use a poll that directly

relates support of homosexuality to race. Not to mention that

victories for civil rights have absolutely nothing to do with how

many people support the victory. Rather, they depend on whether or

not an inequality was made equal.

I hope one day soon you and other opponents of gay rights across

the world will come to realize that you are no different than the

people who made African Americans sit in the back of the bus, and

you are denying human beings their natural rights of, “life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Ben Clark

Sophomore, forestry

Last week Ms. Schneider spent an entire column deriding the

opposition to the Wal-Martization of America as sour grapes at best

and anti-capitalist at worst. This week, Ms. Schneider spends an

entire column bemoaning the loss of the commitment to customer

service that the American retail sector supposedly cherished in the

good ol’ ’50s. She waxes nostalgic for that era, particularly the

“mom and pop shops” which were apparently the very pinnacle of

customer service, and their loss is something we should all

regret.

Did it ever, at any point, occur to Ms. Schneider that there may

have been, somewhere along the line, a cause-and-effect

relationship between the crushing effects of retail monoliths like

Wal-Mart on those hypothetical mom-and-pop outfits and the decline

in the American customer service ethic? When she said that “(it)

seems that even though Americans are working more than ever,

quality of work and pride have declined,” did she really mean to

imply that having to “work more” should improve the quality of

one’s work? Where I come from, it makes perfect sense that a person

who works a 60-hour week for minimum wage would be a little less

committed to the principles of customer service than a person who

works a 40-hour week for a living wage.

While I respect Ms. Schneider’s right to applaud the processes

that destroy our nation’s service ethic, I do not believe it should

come as a surprise to her when they succeed in doing so.

Eric J. Richardson

Senior, electrical and computer engineering