Compensation fund helps rebuild lives

The Sun's front-page article "Victims' fund assists felons" (March 16) was provocative and biased because it focused on exposing a small portion of the expenditures of the Maryland Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund.

How could reporter Josh Mitchell have failed to notice that large portions of its funds are distributed to women, senior citizens and children who are victims of abuse?

The Pro-Bono Counseling Project has worked with families and individuals for the past 10 years, including innocent victims of a drive-by shooting, elderly residents left beaten and tied up in their basement after a home invasion, women who were brutally beaten by a domestic partner and children who had been used in Internet pornography.

And we are grateful for the Maryland Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund for paying for the hospital bills of many uninsured crime victims and other victims with low incomes.

Please use this article as the first in a series about the compensation fund and the valuable contribution it is making in helping heal people's lives.

My project and many other organizations throughout Maryland that work with victims can introduce Mr. Mitchell to families and individuals who never would have recovered the lives they had led before their victimization without the financial assistance of the Maryland Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund.

Barbara K. Anderson

Baltimore

The writer is the executive director of the Pro-Bono Counseling Project.

Wright tells truths many would bury

While the editorial "Obama and his pastor" (March 19) rightly lauds the brilliance of Sen. Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday, it makes an inaccurate and inflammatory statement in calling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's words "hate speech."

It is not hate speech to describe accurately historical injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government and its white citizens.

It is not hate speech to express an opinion about why many people around the world view the U.S. as an oppressive and murderous state.

It is not hate speech to shed light on deliberately hidden and denied realities of racism in our society today and their roots deep in our history and our consciousness.

Pastor Wright's words did not call on his congregation to hate anyone or anything.

He was telling truths many white people would rather bury and forget.

Rather than condemn him for his honesty, we need to honestly face our own history and the benefits we white people still derive from the legacy of enslavement of and discrimination against people descended from Africans.

Dottye Burt-Markowitz

Baltimore

Loyalty of blacks goes unrewarded

Lost in all the overheated rhetoric about Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is the fact that most white people simply don't understand black people's pain ("Obama attacks racial divide," March 19).

Loyalty is a two-way street, and America has done anything but return the loyalty it has been given by its citizens of color from the very beginning.

The amazing thing about Pastor Wright's comments is not the black anger that they express but the fact that we African-Americans are not more angry than we are.

Progress has been made, as Mr. Obama has pointed out. But not so much that we can lay the past to rest.

The problem is not Pastor Wright but the reluctance of a preponderance of the white population to extend to people of color the basic rights they take for granted themselves.

Eric D. Smith

Baltimore

Links to demagogue make Obama unfit

His oratory and rhetoric notwithstanding, Sen. Barack Obama's attempt to bridge the racial divide obscured an important issue ("Obama attacks racial divide," March 19): The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's hate-mongering includes anti-American rhetoric.

Anyone who chooses to embrace such a demagogue as if he were a member of his family and refuses to disown him is unfit to be president.

Jerrold L. Brotman

Towson

Will new power line bisect battlefield?

Thank you for The Sun's excellent article about the danger to Antietam battlefield posed by proposed cell phone towers ("Fight for 'hallowed ground,'" March 13).

But here in West Virginia, ordinary citizens are fighting against a project that may be a far larger danger to Antietam battlefield.

Allegheny Power is in the process of organizing a billion-dollar electrical transmission project that would go through West Virginia, and then perhaps through the battlefield on its way to its destination in Maryland.

The project is called the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, and the electrical transmission towers it would involve would rise nearly 200 feet, not the 30 feet that cell phone towers reach.

While some people may say that a power line through Antietam battlefield could never happen, Allegheny Power's history of disregard for environmental concerns suggests that it very well might push for the shortest, least-costly route - and that might go straight through Antietam battlefield.

Michael Lippe

Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Civil marriage still issue for civil law

Despite all his impressive quotations and references to the Declaration of Independence, the writer of the letter "State can't redefine nature of marriage" (March 12) fails to observe that it is those on the religious right who are redefining marriage in their own image.

Many on the religious right fail to see that a civil marriage is not a religious ceremony, that a justice of the peace who may officiate at such a ceremony is not a religious minister, and that the state does have a fundamental interest in regulating and, yes, even altering the laws governing this contract between two citizens.

Civil marriage is a secular contract, which is administered by the state in the interest of regulating property.

As such, it is properly subject to the state constitution, which prohibits discrimination.

Craig Bumgarner

Baltimore

County wastes time condemning big cat

I guess Baltimore County has solved homelessness, provided food for the hungry, rebuilt all of our dilapidated school buildings, provided health care for those in need and repaved all of the roads.

Why else would county government have the time and money to harass a responsible citizen operating an animal park in a safe manner ("Kingsville man will need permit to keep a lynx," March 18).

The lynx in question is only twice the weight of a large housecat, is declawed and is contained in an enclosure that appears to be more effective than those containing prisoners at state correctional facilities.

I'd take my chances against a 40-pound declawed lynx before tangling with a pit bull or a Rottweiler any day.

Robert S. Abramson

Linthicum