_______________WEB OF HATE BY ROS DAVIDSON (10/16/98)
	It saddens and sickens me that pictures like the one you printed in your magazine have to be publicized. To think that a man as deplorable as Don Black would speak for the Southern people is lunacy. The printing of this picture puts all Southerners in a bad light and makes all of us look as though we are racists and hate-mongers. I am neither, nor do I know or associate, knowingly or unknowingly, with people of that ilk. I am a proud Southerner and to see the symbols of the South used in such a degrading fashion is as sickening to me as I'm sure it is to you -- although I'm sure my reasons are different from yours. This stereotyping of all Southern people as being racists and propagators of hate has to stop. For too long now the symbols of the Confederate States of America have been misused by these hate groups and in a way that has placed all of us in the South on the defense of our heritage. All you are doing by printing such garbage is furthering that which you detest so much. All I can do is hope and pray that someday this type of misleading misinformation will stop and that the cycle of hate will be broken. -- Rick Schell I was very sorry and upset to see the picture of Ron Black in front of a Confederate battle flag. I think this picture could mislead people to embrace the false belief that the flag stands for racism and hate, which is not at all the truth. The battle flag is the flag under which the gallant soldiers of the Confederacy fought and many died for their belief and freedom to govern themselves, and I don't think it should be misused as you do by linking it to hate groups. This beautiful flag is constantly under attack from people who need education and your picture may supply their ammunition. Although I am not an American I feel strongly for the South and their history and it hurts me to see their symbols misused. -- Palle Thomsen Copenhagen, Denmark Is your article about the increased technical savvy of hate groups an informative piece or yet another hysterical condemnation of the freedoms of the Internet? I have a suspicion that it is the latter. Your words ring hollow when you exploit a medium to your benefit, but tacitly imply that others should not be permitted to do the same. The world is advancing. Technology affords even some of the lowliest of individuals and ideologies a home in our networked world. It is the price of freedom, the price of pluralism. There is no room for intolerance of the intolerant. We all might like to wave our big sticks in the face of hatred and discrimination, but however well-meaning our intentions may be, we all suffer when we seek to silence ideas -- even if those ideas may hurt our ears. -- Charles T. Beckert Cleveland After reading the article "Web of Hate," which decries the hate Web sites that exist, I am confused why you would find it wise to actually list the addresses or provide links to these sites. You actually made it easier for more people to find these freakish sites! I know the media wants to provide as much information as possible, but a little discretion could go a long way. -- Adrienne Rogers When hate sites are as common as sites about celebrities eating balls, I'll see a serious cause for concern. For now, though, the only links I've ever seen to godhatesfags.com have been included in stories like yours so that enlightened liberals can go and gawk at the bigots. And I have a suspicion that online recruiting would dry up substantially for many hate groups, especially the notorious Rev. Phelps, if these particular flies in the dung weren't constantly being pulled into the spotlight. -- Michael Whitney Boston
_______________MY HETEROSEXUAL DILEMMA BY RICHARD RODRIGUEZ (10/19/98)
	Congratulations to Richard Rodriguez for a well-written analysis of the tragedy in Wyoming. Our society must practice zero tolerance for this sort of hate. I am a straight male who is unwilling to give the smallest amount of leeway to anyone who harbors this kind of hatred. It's time we grew up. How long are we going to let small minds run this nation? When do we get over this playground mentality? While Rodriguez makes a very good point, he doesn't go far enough when he says, "As a gay man, I do not expect other Americans -- male or female -- to approve of my sexuality. But I demand the right to be." Why not approval? We expect approval for heterosexuality. We condone it. Institutionalize it. Oh sure, it fails half the time, but does anyone cry out for its banishment? Of course not. I know that space is limited in any publication (even electronic), but I would love to see some greater analysis of these issues. And continue to sound the alarm. We must all do our part to educate everyone. -- Curt Waugh Ann Arbor, Mich. In his otherwise excellent essay, Richard Rodriguez makes the same aggravating mistake most liberals make: He automatically cedes "family values" to the far right. America is a country of family values, but they're values that will sound a lot more familiar to liberals than conservatives: tolerance, diversity, justice and fairness for all, among others. At the risk of sounding like a bumper sticker, hatred is not a family value, nor are bigotry, greed and hard-heartedness -- all qualities that can be associated with ultra-right-wingers. Here's hoping liberals start laying claim once again to family values. We're certainly entitled to. -- Gregory S. Machlin Rodriguez's complaints might be taken more seriously had he not gone way over the top in his speculations about the recent murder of Matthew Shephard. He presumes the motive was gay bashing, not robbery. He accepts without question the claim of one of the alleged killer's girlfriends that the attack sprang from an attempt by Shephard to flirt with one of his killers. We don't know that to be so. He goes on to identify a problem with all of heterosexual male America based on his presumptions (unsubstantiated by any real evidence at this point) about what may have gone on in the minds of Shepherd's killers. Rodriguez is tired, he says, of being held responsible by the heterosexual men of America for the breakdown of the family and the fact that their wives now want careers and the like. Well, I -- heterosexual American male that I am, with a (thank God!) working wife -- am tired of being held responsible by self-appointed spokesmen for gays for the mindless violence of a handful of depraved or psychotic killers. I will offer Rodriguez a deal: If he will stop pontificating about the "mind" of some imaginary collective entity called "American heterosexual males," I will promise never to begin to do what I have never done: generalize about the (singular) "mind" of some imaginary collective entity called "gays." -- Robert A. Becker Baton Rouge, La.
_______________THE DESIGNATED MARTYR BY CHARLES TAYLOR (10/16/98)
	I protest all that bleating about Charles Taylor's "Beloved" review. I loved the novel, and I took no offense. Taylor talked me out of the movie, but there were already bad signs. As Toni Morrison said initially, it's an unfilmable book (no matter how much money Oprah throws at it or how sincerely she feels it. Neither make her an artist capable of pulling this off ). The clips in the commercials had that "The Color Purple" Disney gloss: Welcome back to Slaveryland! A worse look or outlook to graft onto Morrison's beautiful, wretched, about-language tale is unimaginable. I still thought I might go, because like Taylor, I once loved Jonathan Demme's movies. He had cooler soundtracks than Quentin Tarantino and the movies were, as Taylor points out, populist and casually multiracial. He mocked tacky lives as humanely as John Waters, but Demme was a graceful, instinctive filmmaker. Long, detail-packed scenes like the milkmen's Christmas party in "Melvin and Howard," "Something Wild's" convertible ride and the Hello Gorgeous beauty shop in "Married to the Mob" were as funky and ecstatic as anything going. Taylor's also right to point out Demme's formerly great direction of actors -- he got best-ever performances from Melanie Griffith, Ray Liotta, Paul LeMat, Mary Steenburgen and Alec Baldwin, at least. And then "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia." It was as if he'd been replaced by a pod, his personality stolen. Those films are generic product, with no quirks and no art. Demme's sad decline together with the directorial choices Taylor describes convinces me that the planets indeed have aligned to make "Beloved" as God-awful as it could possibly have been. Keep on telling it like it is and saving us our $7.50! -- Virginia Vitzthum Mount Rainier, Md. [Editor's note: Virginia Vitzthum is an ocassional Salon contributor.] SALON | Oct. 22, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| TURTLE TIME BY ANNE LAMOTT

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