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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993                   TAG: 9304230481
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO TOLERANCE FOR THE INTOLERANT

I HAVE NEVER previously written a letter to the editor, but after reading Louise Spangler's April 9 letter ("Comic's creator is not an authority") and countless other holier-than-thou, closed-minded opinion letters, I can hold out no more.

Although I would rather be entertained when I read the comics, I see absolutely no harm in Lynn Johnston ("For Better Or For Worse") addressing teen-age homosexuality, which she has witnessed first-hand. No one is going to read professional journals to learn how to deal with someone who is gay, and comic strips reach professionals, teen-agers, parents, and yes, even the unknowingly ignorant.

Teen-ager homosexuality is as much a normal problem today as safe sex. I am sorry if you do not like it, but that's the way it is and it must be addressed somehow. All of the gay-bashing and quotes from the Bible will not change a thing except to exclude yet another group of human beings from society.

I cannot say that I am proud to live in a country where white men stole from the Native Americans, used Africans as slaves to build it into the morally and financially bankrupt empire it is today, where we hate people who do not look or act like us, have sex for money, beat the living daylights out of homosexuals and then turn around and date rape our girlfriends and still have the audacity to hide behind the Bible.

Wake up and go to your neighbor - gay, straight, black, white or in between - and understand them on a human level. I am not gay, and I think the female body is a work of art. But I have the courage to be open-minded and try to accept people the way they are, with one exception: ignorant.

CHRISTOPHER E. SHEPARD\ ROANOKE

by CNB