Ruling on Gays

* I read with incredulity and outrage the opinion of the appeals court which sanctioned Cincinnati’s discrimination against gay people (May 13). So the court finds that gays are an “unidentifiable class of individuals,” shielded from legal burdens and penalties. Tell this absurdity to the thousands of lesbian and gay service members who have been thrown out of the military simply for being lesbian or gay, or to Sharon Bottoms, from whom the Supreme Court of Virginia recently took her biological son, simply because she’s a lesbian, though a fine mother, or to the tens of thousands of law-abiding lesbian and gay Americans who still cannot have sex legally in the privacy of their own homes in 23 states in this country.

This spectacle of judges saying idiotic things to justify discrimination shows how far we have to go to enjoy the equal protection of the law in America.

ALEX MURRAY

Altadena

* The recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling upholding the exclusion of gays from equal rights protections is a nonsensical one. The decision states, “No law can successfully be drafted that is calculated to . . . benefit or protect an unidentifiable group or class of individuals whose identity is defined by subjective and unapparent characteristics such as innate desires, drives and thoughts.”

The court needs to further explain exactly what objective, apparent characteristics the religiously protected exhibit.

R.E. NEU

Los Angeles