Letters to the editor

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 52 | December 25 – January 1, 2003

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Global Human Rights

December 17, 2003

To the Editor:

Thank you for your excellent coverage of the recent rally by the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats and UINTE! With presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to demand worker rights at the H&M clothing store (“Kucinich Claims Progressive Mantle,” by Paul Schindler, Dec. 11-17).

It’s heartening that an alliance has formed between activists from labor and LGBT organizations in order to clarify what it means to say, “Equal rights for all.”

The many dollars that the queer community spends at H&M have helped to make the owners of H&M rich. In developing nations like Indonesia and Thailand, though, workers sewing H&M clothes are paid $1 per day. It’s my understanding that in the U.S., H&M pays wages below the poverty level and has fired workers who want to join the union UNITE!

LGBT workers are also LGBT consumers. It’s high time that our community not only demands respect for gay people in their workplace, but also where our buying power can have significant influence on other human rights issues. I hope other gay groups join GLID and UNITE! In telling H&M and other retailers that market to our community that we’re informed consumers and that we demand that they respect queer rights, workers’ rights, and human rights everywhere.

Lorna Gottesman

Manhattan

Go Midwest, Young Man

December 20, 2003

To the Editor

Wow. Tough love is right. Michelangelo Signorile’s response to “hateful community” was indeed harsh (Tough Love for the Lovelorn, Dec. 18-24).

While I definitely agree with his assessment of the situation, putting the responsibility of one’s situation on that person himself, I must say there was certainly veracity in the writer’s position as well.

In New York City, where I live, everything is amplified and exaggerated, bigger, louder, faster, broader, etc. And this includes those deplorable traits the man who wrote to Signorile attaches to gay men, as superficial, self-absorbed, status seeking users.

It’s just a fact. I’m not sure where the writer resides, but if he is in New York City, my advice to him: get thee to the friendlier Midwest ASAP!

Thanks.

Russ Schramm

Brooklyn

Corrections

A sub-headline on Andy Humm’s story on the fight over the blessing of same-sex unions in the Episcopal Diocese of New York was incorrect. (“Episcopal Congregants Press for Same-Sex Liturgy,” Dec. 4-10). Bishop Mark Sisk has not opted “to forbid blessing partners,” as the sub-head said. He has said that he does not believe that the resolution passed at the church’s national convention empowered him to authorize them on a diocesan basis. Local parishes in the Diocese of New York do perform blessings of same-sex partners and Sisk has neither forbidden them nor disciplined priests who perform them as Humm’s article made clear.

Due to an editing error in Andy Humm’s News Briefs item on Rosie O’Donnell making up with Mike Signorile (Dec. 11-17), the New York Post theater columnist who Rosie called “self-hating” was misidentified as Michael Rider. His last name is Riedel.

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