Bigotry

IFINALLY UNDERSTAND why people have been comparing the treatment of black people with the treatment of gay and lesbian people - it's because prejudice is prejudice. It's not a comparison of two totally different groups of people with totally different cultures and lifestyles, but rather a comparison of attitudes and bigotry that people are commenting on. Remember that people become victims of prejudice and discrimination for numerous reasons, so never make the mistake of validating the ideology of any bigot and furthering the belief that some people deserve to be discriminated against.

I was really moved by the Nov. 8 article on 13-year-old John DeMarco, the white Frankford youth who testified against Richard Keller, who spray-painted racist slogans on the walls of a home into which a black woman planned to move. Having grown up in a white working-class neighborhood myself (in the lower Northeast), I know well how the forces of racism can intimidate and cow into silence even the good people of a community. What makes the article so poignant for me is that John DeMarco and his mother, Peg, demonstrated the courage that is so lacking in our public officials, from whom we have a right to expect moral leadership.

Philadelphia is experiencing difficult days. Amidst the financial dilemma that has paralyzed progress in city government, a funk has permeated the body politic, a feeling that perhaps our best days are past. We at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce believe the current financial problems of the city are temporary and manageable. As difficult as the budget problem appears to be, we believe that - while painful - the eventual solution will be of lasting benefit for the city, and that better days will come.

It's tempting to ignore a Florida pastor's plans to burn copies of the Quran, and deny him the publicity he so obviously craves. But the Rev. Terry Jones would pursue his lunatic-fringe stunt whether it was attended by a solitary blogger or a convoy of satellite TV trucks. Jones' brand of malevolence must be condemned whenever it slithers into the light of day. Saturday is the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Jones, pastor of a church with the incongruous name of Dove World Outreach Center, thinks it is fitting to mark the occasion by torching 200 copies of the sacred text of the Islamic faith.

The clash of Catholic green and Protestant orange in Northern Ireland is not - on the face of it - an inviting subject for a black comedy. But by the time Peter Smith's No Surrender has run its savage and hilarious course, the claims of both sides lie in the kind of smoking ruins that are part of the tragic landscape of Belfast. The aim of Smith's satire is to expose the multitude of sins that can be cloaked by religious bigotry. And the happiest inspiration of Alan Bleasdale's Pinteresque screenplay is to set the action in Liverpool rather than Northern Ireland.

Violence rooted in bigotry is reaching "epidemic" proportions, civil rights advocates said yesterday in calling on the federal government to more closely monitor such activity. Researchers at the Center for Democratic Renewal said they had found more than 2,900 cases of "hate violence," ranging from vandalism to murder, from 1980 to 1986. "Not a day has passed in the last seven years without someone in the United States being victimized by hate violence," the report said. "Harassment, vandalism, arson, assault and murder motived by racism, anti- Semitism or other forms of bigotry - such as homophobia - plague every section of our country.

Meghan Daum is an essayist and novelist in Los Angeles Last week, while you were distractedly waiting for one of the presidential candidates to just go ahead and choose Michael Phelps as his running mate, a New York lawyer sued Columbia University for discriminating against men. In a news release, Roy Den Hollander, who's best-known for suing Manhattan nightclubs because they offered free or discounted Ladies' Night drinks to women, contended...

"You're dirty. You're dirty," taunted the 3-year-old Jewish boy as he ate lunch with Shannon Moore, 18, who is black and quite dark-skinned. Moore never raised her voice. Instead of responding angrily, she simply explained to the boy that she is not dirty and that black people's skin comes in many shades. Moore's explanation, said her teacher Ernestine Allston, taught the boy an important lesson in differences. And in her own small way, Moore's actions helped to fight bigotry, Allston said.

Let me make sure I understand. If major-league baseball doesn't do something about Marge Schott, majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds who, according to court testimony, has displayed a certain insensitivity for people who are not of her race, creed or religion - if baseball doesn't do something about her, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will make baseball wish it had. Marge Schott isn't my kind of guy, not so much for what is ordinarily referred...

We gather here today to parse the meaning of boo . Not boo as in the greeting of ghosts and goblins, but rather boo as in the chorus that drowned out the bigot Rick Santorum last week as he defended his opposition to gay marriage before an audience of college students in Concord, N.H. Santorum took the same header into non sequitur and illogic that gay-marriage opponents often take, i.e., "If we legalize this, then we must also...

In March 1942, a few months after America entered World War II, the U.S. Army issued its first official regulation designed to screen out gay men. The directive listed three supposedly telltale signs of homosexuality: "feminine bodily characteristics," "effeminacy in dress and manner," and a "patulous rectum. " For those who don't have a dictionary handy, patulous means "expanded. " And, yes, the Army regulation really said that. I thought of this shameful history as I read a recent Inquirer story about the mass murderer Howard Unruh, whose case files were released by the Camden County Prosecutor's Office after persistent requests by the newspaper.

Dump Biden for Clinton If President Obama really wants a second term, Hillary Clinton needs to be on the ticket. Joe Biden was Jon Corzine's biggest supporter, pushing hard for Corzine to get Timothy Geithner's job. Do you really think our Treasury secretary should be somebody who "doesn't know and doesn't remember" what happened to billions of dollars? Joe Biden did. When Biden was Delaware's senator, he blocked all attempts at tougher financial consumer protection laws.

We gather here today to parse the meaning of boo . Not boo as in the greeting of ghosts and goblins, but rather boo as in the chorus that drowned out the bigot Rick Santorum last week as he defended his opposition to gay marriage before an audience of college students in Concord, N.H. Santorum took the same header into non sequitur and illogic that gay-marriage opponents often take, i.e., "If we legalize this, then we must also...

It was only a matter of time before some bigot drew a bead on Mitt Romney and decreed him unfit to be president solely on the basis of his Mormon faith. So it went the other day, when Southern Baptist minister Robert Jeffress took the stage at a conservative confab and introduced his friend Texas Gov. Rick Perry as "a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. " Offstage, Jeffress was less cutesy. He told the media that, "by theological definition, Mormonism is a cult" and that born-again Christians "should always prefer a competent Christian to a competent non-Christian like Mitt Romney.

By Jonathan Gurwitz 'You don't get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success," a critic of President Obama said last week on Fox News Sunday. "I've earned my right to fly private if I choose to do so. And by attacking me, it is not going to convince me that I should take a bigger hit because I happen to be wealthy. " Who was this member of the flying gentry ginning up a class-warfare denunciation of the president on Rupert Murdoch's network? Karl Rove? One of the Koch brothers?

CNN has fired anchor Rick Sanchez a day after he called Jon Stewart a bigot while on a radio show. Sanchez said on a satellite radio program Thursday that Stewart was bigoted toward "everybody else that's not like him. " The Daily Show host has frequently poked fun at Sanchez on the air. When radio host Peter Dominick pointed out that Stewart is Jewish, Sanchez said: "Just because someone's Jewish, they're not capable of...

It's tempting to ignore a Florida pastor's plans to burn copies of the Quran, and deny him the publicity he so obviously craves. But the Rev. Terry Jones would pursue his lunatic-fringe stunt whether it was attended by a solitary blogger or a convoy of satellite TV trucks. Jones' brand of malevolence must be condemned whenever it slithers into the light of day. Saturday is the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Jones, pastor of a church with the incongruous name of Dove World Outreach Center, thinks it is fitting to mark the occasion by torching 200 copies of the sacred text of the Islamic faith.

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight. Just yesterday, it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people - the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama, in an unguarded moment, once memorably called them - clinging "to guns or religion or" - this is less remembered - "antipathy toward people who aren't like them.