
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 6, 1991                   TAG: 9103061114
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

WILL TIME COME WHEN WRONG'S CALLED RIGHT?

JANE JONES wrote (letter, Feb. 17) that she was highly offended by the extensive coverage you gave the gay movement at Tech. Wonder what set her off?

There's nothing inherently offensive about a paper's right to report on deviant, felonious behavior. Maybe she thought the paper exceeded the bounds of decency in presenting homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, but you wouldn't defend perversion, would you?

Sure, you turned up the heat in editorial after editorial, objecting to the oppression of homosexuals who broke the law by soliciting in public. Actually, City Council wanted to target heterosexual behavior for profit, not sodomy, and the paper was nice enough to point out the error in harassing men with good jobs who happen to prefer sex with men. Whores really are the problem, aren't they, because their line of work lacks economic and professional standing, as the gays have?

Yet we doubt. Will there come a time when wrong shall be called right? Shall we give an absolute, criminal right to privacy? Shall then the cocaine users demand association and dealing in the trade free from prosecution? Shall laws be passed to protect buggery and cocaine use? Same difference.

A justice once said, "However difficult it may be to define pornography, you know it when you see it." The newspaper dissembled when it made clever, respectable arguments in defense of sodomy, and the people know it. HENRY KLEINBERG LYNCHBURG

by CNB