Letters to the Editor

A deeply offensive comparison

I found the commentary "Film's dystopia rings familiar" (Friday) deeply offensive.

To compare President Obama's administration, which is trying to bring better health care to all of our citizens and to prevent banks from using our savings in very risky financial deals, to a regime that requires children to kill each other is beyond the pale. It is on the same level as those who have called Obama a Hitler. The author seems to have a searing personal hatred for Obama, not a reasoned argument against his policies. I applaud The Inquirer for giving space to opposing points of view, but, please, not vicious, irresponsible screeds such as this.

Carol LeFevre, Gwynedd

Pioneers of today's Fishtown

I remember Fishtown in the 1960s ("Which Fishtown?" Sunday). It was a neighborhood of working-class whites with hoodlum teenage children, many of whom I am sure are incarcerated or dead from drug overdoses. Although gay-bashing was then a local pastime, it is ironic that some of Fishtown's first homesteaders were gay, as it was in the case of many now gentrified neighborhoods, such as parts of South Philadelphia, Northern Liberties, Spring Garden, and Powelton.

So now that Fishtown's gentrification is in "high gear," credit should be given to those first gay pioneers who persevered and did not let local hoodlums scare them off, which helped turn the neighborhood around. If they had not succeeded, thus encouraging new families to fix up homes, Fishtown would have most likely become a hopeless drug-ridden neighborhood with abandoned, burned-out shells, not the great place to live it is today.

Jason Louis, Cheltenham

Climate change is about facts

When I read the first paragraph of Robert H. Nelson's "Dreaming of a green Christmas" (Friday), I assumed it was a clever satire of the climate-change naysayers. Much to my surprise, it became a pseudo-philosophical rant against environmentalists.

Nelson's basic thesis seems to be that environmental precepts should not be taught in schools because they are part of an "environmental religion." To prove his point, he quotes (out of context) various philosophers and religious leaders and their pronouncements on faith (religion). And therein lies the basic flaw in his argument: Environmentalism and climate change are not articles of faith, but scientific facts! Does the professor believe that gravity or the Earth's revolving around the sun should also not be taught because they are part of some "religion"?

Marlene Lieber, Medford

Women religious doing God's work

While my wife continues to struggle to maintain the faith instilled in her by her strict Irish-Catholic upbringing, I have long since "fallen away" from the church and find that this latest move against nuns by the Vatican only confirms my long-held belief that the Roman Catholic Church might be the most evil institution of its size in existence today ("A good word for the sisters," Sunday). Thank you, Monica Yant-Kinney, for honoring women religious — the representatives of the church who, more than any others, continue to do what is truly God's work.

Vince Phillips, Southampton

Help Iraqis who helped us

I could not agree more with Trudy Rubin's column ("Iraqis who aided U.S. still in a deadly limbo," Sunday). The virtual freeze on the approval of visas for Iraqis who have waited years to travel to the United States is unconscionable.

I worked in Iraq in 2009-10 for a group that was training local Iraqi officials in democratic practices. One of our former Iraqi employees has received repeated assassination threats from a radical Shiite militia, merely because he was employed by a U.S. company. With the virtual freeze on visas, he is very worried that he will not live long enough to travel to the United States.

The freeze should be lifted immediately so that Iraqis who risked their lives for us can finally immigrate to safety.

Leland Bowie, Jenkintown