Letters to the Editor
Malusinka
Published Letters: 350 Editor's Choice: 49
-
For those who think prostitution should be legal
[Read the article: The economics of prostitution]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We don't allow age or sex discrimination on the job. Nor can a company fire or refuse to hire a qualified worker on the basis of sex. So, one presumes this will hold true in the sex industry. Meaning if a 60 year old Grandma (or grandpa) is qualified (ie knows how to and is willing to screw) the brothel should hire her.
In England (where someone on this board claims prostitution is legal). The native prostitutes tended to be in their 40s and less than stunningly beautiful. One presumes this will always be true because the young beautiful women generally can sell their sex appeal on much better terms than as a prostitute in a brothel.
So, this means in legalized prostitution, the sex workers will be second rate. Hence, there will always be a demand for young beautiful women imported from countries that most rational people want to escape from. So, either trafficking and human slavery will continue; (This is true in England, where trafficked women forced into prostitution remains a serious problem).
Or, we start issuing visas to young, beautiful women/men willing to sell sex for low wages to escape their oppressive countries and thus depriving the native sex workers of a livelihood or depressing their wages. If it is not acceptable to flood the country with imported low wage workers in other industries, why should we allow it in the sex industry?
-
Give the guy a break
[Read the article: Clarence Thomas is not a sellout]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't admire Clarence Thomas and think he's a lousy Justice, but let's face it, he probably didn't have a choice of going the affirmative action route or the non-affirmative action route when he went to univeristy and law school. Institutions of higher learning zealously collect racial data and if you don't fill out their little 'voluntary' form, they assign you to a racial category anyway.
Further, perhaps he's changed his mind. Either from having gone through the experience or from seeing how the US has changed. I probably benefited from what Hannaham calls 'white affirmative action' It's likely my acceptance at one of the country's top colleges was due to one of my parents' being an alum. (But I'll never know if I'd have made the cut otherwise) Does this mean I must forever after, defend the practice of giving preference to alums'kids? A preference Hannaham rightly suspects of aiding people from better-off Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.
And seriously, do you expect anyone offered a top job to say, 'sorry, I'm really a mediocre Bozo, give it to someone else'?
What this whole discussion of CT has done is to eliminate debate on the interesting question: Is affirmative action necessary? Is it helping us to achieve a country where skin color is as unimportant as hair color?
My take is no. You can't convince people race is unimportant if you are obsessively dividing people into categories based on race.
-
Yeah, they're feeble but one will be the candidate
[Read the article: Dead party walking]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And the republican candidate will automatically have about 45% of the vote. Perhaps, depending on the Dem, 48 to 49% of the vote. And the remaining 2% to 6% of the vote will be very hard fought.
Kamiya doesn't understand why McCain is an anti-war candidate. To me, the worst thing about the war on terror is the acceptance of unconstitutional and unjust means to fight it. McCain is the only republican against torture and unjudicial detentions.
-
It's the 24 week abortions
[Read the article: Roe, 35 years later]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That cause many feminists to 'fail to maintain support for abortions.' We have to acknowledge that there are serious moral questions about late-term abortions.
I knew a kid who was born at 25 or 26 weeks. He was normal. Maybe not the most coordinated kid, he'll never be a sports star, but so what?
In England, where there is no such fight over abortion rights, there have been cases where the baby in a third trimester abortion has been alive when removed from the mother. (and left to die without ICU care, which the baby would have got if he'd been born to a mother who wanted him.)
I thoroughly support early abortions. I think they should be free and easily accessible. I support abortions where the life of the mother is at serious risk. But I can't really see that outlawing partial birth abortions is a great failure for women's reproductive rights.
In its journey from a few cells to a full-term baby, the fetus acquires rights, which after birth everyone acknowledges are equal to the mother's.
-
You have every right to look for and establish contact with your 1/2 sib
[Read the article: My alcoholic father has a child we never knew about]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What you don't have a right to do is to demand that your father or mother establish a relationship. Your mother is not related to your half-sib. Your father made his own choices, whether or not you agree with them.
I will note that if you succeed in contacting your half-sib, he may be disappointed to learn that his father (the one relative he probably knows about) is not interested in knowing him.
-
AKA Smith
[Read the article: Roe, 35 years later]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I said I fully support a woman's right to an abortion at the early stages. And certainly at three weeks. As the mother of a soon to be fertile daughter, I absoultely defend the right to terminate a pregnancy that is wrong for her. (Which would be true if she were 16).
My reservations are about late term abortions. I get turned off by pro-choice rhetoric that is fighting hard to allow women to terminate a pregnancy when the fetus might be viable.
But, my moral and material support for the pro-choice movement is eroded by some of the battles they pick.
-
Interesting fact:
[Read the article: On coffee and miscarriages]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]'Most miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities,' I wonder what research that is based on. How much research material do they collect? Since an early miscarriage is like a really heavy period, so would require the woman sitting on a potty for hours to collect and then careful work with a microscope to find the embryo/blastocyst in the bloody mess before they could determine normality of its chromosomes.