Videotaping student was no prank; it was a hate crime
Re: “Dumb college prank gone wrong isn’t a hate crime,” Oct. 6
Pulitzer-nominated columnist Gregory Kane should apologize to Tyler Clementi’s family and to the gay community. He should be more sensitive to the plight of this minority group.
Since heterosexuality is the norm at Rutgers, if Clementi had a sexual encounter with a woman instead of a man, nobody would have cared. As a Rutgers graduate, I can assure you that nobody would have bothered to record and/or transmit a heterosexual encounter over the Internet.
People on “Maury” or “The Jerry Springer Show” choose to go public and sign waiver forms. Clementi was not given a choice about having his privacy violated, so this was an inappropriate and highly offensive analogy.
In fact, Dharun Ravi indicated his bias when he posted on Twitter: “I saw him making out with a dude.” This was clearly a hate crime. Substitute the word “dude” with “black” or “Latino” and Mr. Kane might have written a very different column.
William Perez
Washington
Where is the leader of the Republican Party?
Many are questioning whether the Republican Party has an actual leader. Last year, talk show host Rush Limbaugh was anointed by various Democrats and their allies in the media as the leader of the GOP.
But all anyone who continues to ask the question has to do is look at the way newly nominated Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is being treated by her own party officials. The simple answer is that the GOP has no effective leader.
The Republican Party says that it will not financially support O’Donnell because it claims that she is unelectable. If this is the case, then why was a primary needed? If the will of the people are not being respected, why are primaries being held?
Laban Seyoum
Ashburn, Va.
Poor school performance traced to single-parent families
Re: “Firing teachers not enough,” from readers, Aug. 19
Mr. Bagenstose is correct that firing incompetent teachers will not itself remedy low student performance in D.C. schools. He cites other problems: poverty, students’ mental capabilities, home and community environments, school discipline, truancy, and drugs as the cause, but not the teen pregnancy epidemic.
Bagenstose also doesn’t mention the fundamental problem: the destruction of the family in D.C. Research shows single-parent families suffer more poverty, criminal behavior, school dropouts, sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancies, abuse and abortion.
The woeful status of black families is the result of the eugenics that Margaret Sanger and her Planned Parenthood movement have practiced for over a century. Their approach has devolved into enticing teens into premarital sex with contraceptives that fail, and then selling them abortions. Those who don’t abort become single parents without the resources to raise their children so that they are ready to learn.
Student performance will improve in D.C. only when families are restored.
John Naughton
Silver Spring
