Dear Editor:

If the gay and lesbian community is divided over the race for mayor it is only because current mayor Dick Murphy has been a master of symbolism.

Murphy has posed for photo ops at Pride rallies and numerous gay and lesbian community functions. He has offered platitudes about inclusive communities and created a GLBT advisory committee that he largely ignores.

Murphy will undoubtedly shore up his credentials with the gay and lesbian community by pointing to his appointment of openly lesbian councilwoman Toni Atkins as Deputy Mayor of San Diego. Toni is a friend, so I hope she understand this is not meant to belittle her historic appointment in any way, but this too is symbolic.

What matters are issues of substance, and on that point mayor Murphy has been somewhat less than friendly to gays and lesbians. He brought to the council the ill-fated Boy Scouts Balboa Park lease renewal that discriminated against the gay and lesbian community and skirted the city’s own Human dignity Ordinance. That fiasco cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and was eventually tossed out by the courts.

Murphy has repeatedly fought against medical-marijuana and clean needle exchange. He has supported Proposition 22, and contrary to the advice of his own gay and lesbian advisory committee, has refused to take a position on President Bush’s constitutional ban on gay marriage.

This city does not need a strong-mayor form of government, it needs a strong mayor. It needs a mayor who has convictions and is willing to stick to them publicly, not just at rallies. We need a mayor that will face our city’s fiscal problems, not run from them. We need a mayor that will work with the business community and developers, not for them. We need a mayor who’s 20/20 vision is not just in hindsight.

Not since Maureen O’Conner has San Diego’s GLBT community truly had a friend in the mayor’s office. Since that time we have become too willing to abandon the fight for true accomplishments in favor of gold-plated name badges. It is time for us to raise our expectations. We deserve better!

Timothy P. Holmberg

Dear Editor:

Why should we bother wondering about outvoting San Diego Mayor Richard “Securities Fraud” Murphy. when he can be indicted first for intentionally withholding negative information from the city’s financial disclosures, even to their auditors, a classic formula for white collar crime! Let him continue to appeal to San Diego’s numerous rednecks and bigots with his expensive Boy Scout Balboa Park & Mission Bay Leases and Mount Soledad Cross stupidity: this master of malfeasance belongs behind bars!

Jay Murley

Dear Editor:

Mike: Perhaps you should have talked to me about the editorship. We could have put “time-outs” and “no blood-letting” clauses in the contract, right after you agreed to do away with the gossip columnists – all of them.

Lee Schoenbart

Dear Editor:

Rob DeKoven writes a great column, but he’s a bit off the mark about the Union-Tribune and its policies about gay dating.

Although I cannot imagine why anyone gay would want to advertise for a date or relationship in the middle of all those lily-white, right-wing conservative listings, the print version of the U-T offers/offered a “Just Friends” category to the community for many years that was palatable to their readership. But in this high-tech, instant gratification age, using print tends to make DeKoven’s point here moot.

However, if you go online to the U-T’s Web site, SignOnSanDiego, and scroll to “singles” near the bottom of the home page, dating/mating season is wide open to anything and everyone. The section does not discriminate and even lists all the gay bars—from the ghastly (Chee-Chee) to the trite (Montage).

Many of us would embrace a community publication with the editorial quality control of a U-T or Reader if only such a publication would invest more time and effort into fact-checking as opposed to accepting copy on face value without question and slapping it into the pages to make deadline.

Lee Schoenbart

Dear Editor:

I recently read a piece in your Magazine and it brought me to your web site for the first time. My primary reason was to find out more about a columnist, or theater critic rather, and could find no information about her or any other columnist in your magazine. As for me, I always find it helpful to be able to read a bio and examine their qualifications especially if they are providing advice and or critiques.

After coming to your site and finding no such information I decided to respond, however it took me a great deal of time, and I really about gave up, to finally realize that your “contact” information is waaaayyyy at the bottom of the left column in tiny letters along with “About GLT” below your copyright info. Well I guess it could be that you don’t want people to be able to contact you folks but if you do, any web designer, and I know many, would tell you that you should put that info in a highly visible position so that readers can easily contact you.

And lastly, one of the main reasons for wanting to contact you was indeed to make a complaint regarding the theater critic Jean Lowerison. In her recent review, GLT 9/16/04 issue, of “Thief River” playing at Diversionary Theater she made a few negative comments about the play which, if she believes to be true, is fair but she made a remark about the actor Dale Jeter as being “chubby” and I find any such remarks as personal and disgusting and has no place in ANY review of a movie or play. I have pointed this out to many folks in the theater community and all were aghast at such a comment. You’ll recall that Karen Carpenter started down her spiraling affliction with anorexia because of such a remark by a critic so one can see that such remarks can be quite deadly. As a reader of yours and of many other gay papers, I would appreciate it if you would speak to her, and all of your columnist/critics, to assure that they keep their reviews professional and not personal.

J. William Widick