As an African American and customer of Charter One Bank, I appreciate your in-depth article about their disgusting mortgage lending practices ["The Bank of Jim Crow," August 16]. I have made several calls to their offices and was unable to get any type of response. Finally, I noted Vice President Richard Powers's name in your article and called his office. A voicemail message said he was on vacation, but I left him a message asking that he contact me regarding your article. I probably won't hear from him personally, but if enough people call Charter One and demand justice, I'm sure there will be results.
Violet R. Welch
Maple Heights
Keep sex talk out of our nation's restrooms:
Randy Sindelar Corturillo's letter [August 9] completely misses the point. The importuning law was not created to keep men from making passes at other men in public restrooms. It was designed to keep men from making passes at other men and women from making passes at other women. Yes, cruising a public bathroom is distasteful to the majority of people. However, it has been going on longer than Corturillo has been writing quack letters. Nowadays, a person can go to bars or bathhouses. But what if that person is afraid of being seen going into a bathhouse or a gay bar? What if that person identifies as "straight," but wants to be fellated or fellate?
This has nothing to do with the fact that the importuning law was used to imprison a man who, while driving home, made a suggestive but inoffensive comment to a jogger he regularly saw on the drive. The jogger reported it to a cop, who then charged Eric R. Thompson with importuning, which, in turn, violated Thompson's parole and sent him back to jail. The Ohio Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the appeal.
Randy, if you don't think a guy would follow a woman into the restroom of a bar, you really need to go to more bars. Propositioning someone in a restroom is a far cry from the state effectively telling you that you cannot ask someone for sex in any way, shape, or form if you are asking a member of the same sex.
Anthony Glassman
Cleveland
And another sickened Scene reader:
Thanks and good job on Erick Trickey's article about pit bull fighting ["Hidden Horrors," August 16]. I am the owner of an American Staffordshire terrier, which is lumped into the category known as "pit bull." I find dog fighting totally sick, and I love any article that shows how cruel and wrong it is. Reading the article made me sick and mad, but I wanted to thank you for exposing people to the terrible world of dog fighting. I really do not understand how people can force their animals to do that. The thing that really gets me is that, because people fight their pit bulls and purposely train them to be mean, I have to withstand people saying mean things about my dog.
Anthony Davian
North Royalton
No room for the intellectually exhausted:
Michael Marin's letter ["Immaculate Misconception," August 23] accuses a previous writer of being "willfully uninformed," "narrow-minded," and "woefully ignorant" because of that writer's defense of the Catholic Church. [Editor's note: Marin responded to Gerald S.'s letter in the July 26 issue; Gerald S.'s letter referred to "A Few Good Men," May 24.] Marin's supporting evidence (or lack thereof) shows that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in this country.
First, Marin may have been "driven" from the Catholic Church "intellectually exhausted," but he is on the outside looking in. The Catholic Church is one of the fastest growing religions in this country. These new members must not know what Marin knows.
Second, Marin says one must be "woefully ignorant" if one thinks the Catholic Church has been a champion of the poor and downtrodden. It is Marin who is woefully ignorant. With its hospitals, schools, and charity programs, the Church has been the single greatest engine of social advancement in the history of this country. His assertion that educated men no longer need the priesthood to escape the drudgery of everyday life ignores the fact that priests are among the most educated men in our society.
Marin is obviously among the group of angry ex-Catholics who feel the need to distort the truth and outright lie to hurt the Church. But that's fine. With each new generation, the ever-growing Catholic Church will be just fine without him.
Patrick Scully,
Director of Communications
Catholic League
New York, NY