WW welcomes letters to the editor via mail, e-mail or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less. Mission Improbable Having printed that despicable letter from Alan Barkman (Letters, WW, Sept. 1, 1999) does not provide your audience with "an understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference." (That's your "mission," right?) Unless, of course, that difference is to go out and put the fear of gays being pedophiles in the hearts of every God- and queer-fearing OCA petition signer. Is that your mission? Given the evidence, I say yes. Your wishy-washy coverage of the anti-gay bills in Salem this year and printing of Mr. Barkman's letter are quite a testimony to your own "moral character." Willamette Week, I am sick of your pretentious, one-degree-left-of-center politics. Why don't you quit whining about the conservative Oregonian and admit your own homophobic leanings, instead of allowing people like Alan Barkman to say it for you? Cowards. Sarah Barnard Northeast 44th Avenue Behind The Badge Your recent editorial on the Boy Scouts ["Trustworthy, Loyal...and Lost," WW, Sept. 8, 1999] made a couple of remarks I find contradictory and difficult to reconcile: While, on the one hand, "the Scout culture of cooperation, self-reliance and love of nature is admirable," its leadership is "antediluvian when it comes to matters of sexual preference and belief in God." But, I ask, what motivates and underlies the Scouts' ideals of moral, ethical and character development in the first place? That is, if God is deleted from the equation, on what philosophical basis besides pure self-interest do any of us, including parents, impart anything at all to the younger generations? If trustworthiness and loyalty are merely human conventions, why--aside from fear of punishment--should a child or young person adhere to them? For that matter, if we are mere products of chance and evolution, is it even meaningful to speak of and advocate such current ideals as "tolerance" and "human rights" at all? Perhaps the Boy Scouts and the worldview they represent are indeed a sociocultural anachronism. But that hardly qualifies the new "progressive" one as an improvement. Harley Jamieson Northeast Skidmore Street Postdiluvian Faith So WW is convinced that the Boy Scouts' "belief in God" is "antediluvian" and that the organization's insistence on "reverence to God" is a mere "litmus test" ["Trustworthy, Loyal...and Lost" Sept. 8, 1999]? Many of us born long after the Flood persist in believing in a Supreme Being. We also see nothing wrong when the members of a private organization decide that certain beliefs, among them a reverence to God, are important elements of the organization's very identity. Some of us are even liberals. God knows that WW is biased against religion, and I wouldn't be surprised if She were starting to get mighty annoyed. Chris Vice Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Managing Meredith I would like to respond to the statement made by Meredith Webster, assistant supervisor of the Mount Hood Ranger District, who said of the Eagle Ridge Timber Sale, "We have no reason to cancel it. We still have forest-management objectives" ["Out on a Limb," WW, Sept. 1, 1999]. If your "management objective" is to continue to harvest the remaining original temperate rainforest that exists on public lands, then you are only responding to the demands of the money-powerful, minority timber industry. They have had their way with our forests for far too long. As a professional forester with 30 years of first-hand observation of the timber industry's ongoing overharvesting and total mismanagement of the forest ecosystem on their lands, I say to you, Meredith: We, the silent majority, are telling you to stop harvesting the remaining old-growth forest ecosystems on our lands. Start managing our lands first and foremost for diversity in age as well as species. We pay your salary. If you do not want to do the job we are telling you to do, then please go to work for the industry that you clearly sympathize with. David Gabrielsen Beavercreek   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published September 22, 1999