Letters : Reagan Policy on the Retarded

Ronald Ostrow’s article (Jan. 19), “U.S. Supports Denying Site For Retarded,” points out the basic flaw in this Administration. The Justice Department is bigoted.

Their fear that protecting the constitutional rights of the mentally retarded might force them to protect the insane and alcoholics reveals the basic mind set at the Justice Department. Anyone who is not “normal” (white, rich, yuppie, etc.) does not belong in their neighborhood.

I lived for seven years in Palo Alto, and my house was one block from the Community Assn. for the Retarded. Not only were there no social problems with the center, but the community used to collect newspapers to raise money for the center’s expenses.

Some of the children I knew from the center now are productive members of this society.

The brief supporting the Cleburne, Tex., zoning ordinance is reminiscent of the recent Justice Department brief supporting the cancellation of court-ordered bussing, which promotes “neighborhood schools” (i.e. ghetto schools and white schools).

The Reagan Administration was voted a second term in office on its economic record and the majority of voters chose either to support or ignore the Administartion’s policy of bigotry.

Disgusting!

GARY DUNCAN

Camarillo

Invigorated from “turning plowshares into swords” and “turning no other cheek,” the Reagan Administration continues its “moral crusade”, by once again attacking some of the most vulnerable in our society--the mentally retarded.

The Times article stated: “. . . the Justice Department contended that, unlike blacks and other racial minorities, the retarded are not a class that deserves special attention to prevent them from suffering discrimination.”

This completely heartless attitude is by no means something new for a Reagan Administration--I vividly remember that when Ronald Reagan was governor of California he steadfastly refused to approve funding for screen doors on state mental hospitals, even though they had no air-conditioning and had to leave their doors open during the summer: The result, personally engineered by Reagan, was a bunch of poor, sweaty retarded kids whose faces were covered with filthy flies!

How would Reagan like it if he or one of his loved ones were retarded and forced to undergo such inhuman treatment?

Forgive my not turning the other cheek, but somebody’s got to speak out in the name of justice--the “Justice” Department surely isn’t: If Reagan really wants to see an “Evil Empire,” he need look no farther than his own Administration!

DOUG DRENKOW

Arcadia

Gone are the hopes that mentally retarded persons have the civil right, customarily accorded to U.S. citizens, of living in housing locations of choice. In its shameful brief, the Justice Department stated that “the retarded are not a class that deserves special attention to prevent them from suffering discrimination.”

What is it, if not a crying need for special attention when retarded men and women are denied equal access to neighborhoods across the country, as in Cleburne, because of the unfounded fears of the community?

What could have been a tremendous opportunity of break-through proportions if the Justice Department had interpreted the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment to protect, once and for all, mentally handicapped citizens in need of a decent place to live became, instead, something of a freeze on the current policy to house mentally retarded persons in an ordinary way alongside their non-disabled counterparts.

On the level of the denial of a civil right to this beseiged group of vulnerable people, the Justice Department’s stand is shocking; more, it dangerously undercuts the prevailing national policy as well as the longtime goal of the Reagan Administration in particular, that the mentally retarded as individuals and as a group with similar social needs should live in local neighborhoods.

How can that worthy aim be promoted now when it is official that if you are mentally retarded you have no rightful opportunity to a residential housing site?

This outrageous decision has led me to rethink our freedoms. It seems to me it cannot be said we are a free people until we free groups of mentally retarded individuals to live where they choose in this big land of ours.

Best of all, there’s diversity. A nation expresses its acceptance of diversity, doesn’t it, when it gives access to all its people to its residential settings?

We learn from each other and when mentally retarded and other disabled citizens are our neighbors what we’ve done is to broaden the base of our enrichment while enlarging and opening up the meaning of community.

MURIEL COHEN

Los Angeles

I feel the Reagan Administration has gone too far in regarding the mentally retarded, and in essence all of the disabled population of the United States, as unworthy of equal protection under the law, as set forth in the 14th Amendment.

The Justice Department believes a minority is a racial, religious, political, national, or other group regarded as different from the larger group of which it is part.

I feel this is unfair because the disabled population, of which I am a part, fits the definition of a minority group that badly needs the 14th Amendment’s protection.

I do not believe the Supreme Court of the United States should support such a blatant discriminatory policy of the Reagan Administration!

MICHELLE LOGAN

Fountain Valley

I was shocked and pained to read the article stating that the Justice Department supported the city of Cleburne in the use of an unjust zoning ordinance to block a home for 13 retarded individuals in a residential neighborhood.

In so doing, they bar these people from a normal mainstream life experience. Naturally, the developmentally disabled citizens of this country will look to the Justice Department to uphold their rights and protect their dignity and worth. They are, a silent minority, but for the voice of their advocates.

How can these learned gentlemen of the Reagan Administration support a cruel concept that stigmatizes, isolates and punishes a group of vulnerable individuals and then say, “they need our concern and sympathy?

Their God-given rights are being denied and they need protection under the law.

CORA BREEN

San Gabriel