DOES PAPER DEFEND RAPISTS' RIGHTS, TOO?

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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993                   TAG: 9302080274
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
DOES PAPER DEFEND RAPISTS' RIGHTS, TOO?
YOUR KNOT-HEADED editorial (Jan. 29, "A fight deferred but not abandoned") regarding homosexuals in the military is as disgusting as it is despicable.
My 10 years enlisted service coupled with 11 years as a Naval officer qualifies me to an opinion based on empirical observation.
Simply put, it won't work for homosexuals to come out of their closet because physical gay-bashing will be the result.
My first duty was aboard the USS Knox. We slept in metal-framed hammocks stacked so close I had to get half-way out of my bunk to turn over, because the guy above my billet was so close to me.
I was a patient in the Navy Hospital near DaNang, Vietnam in 1967. And you people want me to share a bunker or fox hole with someone whose sexual orientation is as screwed-up as Hogan's goat? No way!
You say "legal discrimination by the government against a class of people is indefensible." Do you then maintain that rapists, as a class of social deviates, cannot be "discriminated against"?
Why, soon, I expect you to maintain that it's "civil rights" that is being denied homosexuals when forced out of the military. Then I expect you to promote the deviates as having constitutional rights to be in the military.
Well, when are you ignoramuses going to promote nudity in the military for that "class of people"?
Get real and remember the cliche of our times - "It's the Editorial Writers, Stupid!" JACK MILLS BEDFORD

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB