SEX & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Parents Music Resource Center’s announced intent is to pressure the music industry to label records for profanity and sexual content (“Parent Warn: Take the Sex & Shock Out of Rock,” by Patrick Goldstein, Aug. 25).

However, I wouldn’t be surprised if certain of its members, including those whose husbands are powerful Democratic and Republican Party senators, did not have a more insidious hidden agenda--stifling the cultural and political power of rock music.

Rock musicians have successfully conveyed powerful anti-political and religious establishment and pro-alternative life-style and culture messages over the last 20 years.

The status quo wants to squelch such messages by implicitly threatening the record companies so they’ll think twice about letting artists like Dylan, Springsteen, Prince or Madonna record songs critical of Central American or Mideast policies, the institution of the draft or compulsory national youth service, Jerry Falwell and the “Moral Majority” or supportive of womens’ right to abortion, gay and lesbian sexuality or “new age” religions.

CAROL MOORE, songwriter

Los Angeles