Black Backers of GOP Have Forgotten History

Re “GOP Sees a Future in Black Churches,” Feb. 1: So African American churches have now joined the GOP -- the very party that abandoned African Americans in their struggle for equal civil rights -- in supporting a host of new Jim Crow laws aimed at building a wall of segregation to enclose gay Americans in a legal ghetto where they will be denied equal rights. Will decent Americans speak out against this immoral alliance, whose sole purpose is to attack gay families? Equal protection under the law, justice and liberty for all are slowly slipping away from us all.

Ray Shelton

Glendale

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How many gays and lesbians, believing that black people should be free to marry anyone of their choosing, marched alongside their black brothers and sisters in the 1960s to get miscegenation laws overturned in this country? Now we discover that certain conservative black groups are working hard to codify a ban against same-sex marriage, putting them, essentially, in the same position as the white racists of 40 years ago. How sadly ironic.

Roland E. Zwick

Valencia

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So President Bush lauds (and pays handsomely) nonprofit organizations (such as black churches) that praise and vote for him. But then he has the Internal Revenue Service put the muscle on the NAACP (another black nonprofit organization) because one of its leaders dared criticize him. Can anyone else see a bit of hypocrisy here?

Bonnie Compton Hanson

Santa Ana