To the Editor:
Re “Web Designer Wins Right to Turn Away Gay People” (front page, July 1):
Given the Supreme Court’s track record throughout the past year — including, most notably, the gutting of affirmative action and federal abortion protections — I shouldn’t have been surprised when, along ideological lines, it ruled in favor of a web designer who would refuse a same-sex couple seeking her services. Yet, I was.
But more than that, I was afraid for the futures of L.G.B.T.Q.+ individuals, whose rights are seemingly undermined with each passing day. I fear that the day will arrive when outward discrimination and oppression become permissible, so long as they are presented under the guise of religious freedom or free speech. The day when signs reading “Gays not served here” become a reality.
I would love more than anything else to fool myself into believing that the United States has realized its ideals of justice and equality for all. Yet, the contrary is painfully evident when one of the greatest setbacks the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community has encountered recently occurs during Pride Month.
Ravin Bhatia
Brookline, Mass.
To the Editor:
I am a 76-year-old lesbian. Here’s the thing: My partner and I and our supportive family would never buy a cake or a website from any business that discriminates. So this isn’t about that.
It is about the Supreme Court saying there is something about our love of 34 years that is not equal to your love. Who we are is not equal. And what this is really about is that the constitutional separation of church and state is no longer respected by the highest court of our land.
Nancy Flaxman
Novato, Calif.
To the Editor:
I’m confused. Aren’t Christians supposed to behave as Jesus Christ did? Jesus accepted and loved everyone — prostitutes, sinners, etc. The attitude of denying service to L.G.B.T.Q. people who seek help from a business open to the public strikes me as un-Christian.
No wonder so many people are choosing not to affiliate with churches, and a large percentage are labeled “nones” — no religious affiliation.
I urge all Christians, especially those operating businesses as Christians, to act in an accepting Christian manner and embrace all who seek out their businesses.
Ellen Creane
Guilford, Conn.
To the Editor:
What about interracial marriage? There are those with sincerely held religious beliefs who cite scriptural references that support segregation of the races, as do those who justify their anti-gay bias in this manner. Indeed, these biblical passages were used in the Southern states to justify Jim Crow laws back in the era of lynchings.
Should these people be able to refuse service for interracial couples? If not, why not? It would seem that some scriptural cherry-picking is in effect here.
Justice Clarence Thomas has a white wife. It would be sweet justice if the Thomases were denied service when they try to order an anniversary cake.
In other words, this is a slippery slope.
Don Budzinski
Evanston, Ill.
To the Editor:
Re “Christians and Drag Queens Both Defend the First Amendment,” by David French (column, July 1):
I agree that freedom of speech includes both letting someone give hateful speech (if not inciting violence) and also not forcing someone to speak against their conscience.
That said, how is a web designer who creates a wedding page for a gay couple seen as being forced to speak against her conscience? The speech is the gay couple’s, not hers. She provides a service, but no one assumes the words are hers.
What am I missing (that the majority of justices must be missing as well)?
James Berkman
Plymouth, Vt.
To the Editor:
The majority of this Supreme Court has been content to ignore precedent in imposing its views on the public. Now it extends its disdain for centuries of our jurisprudence by deciding a case in which the plaintiff lacked standing.
Lorie Smith, the web designer, wasn’t contesting a penalty imposed for her business’s failure to comply with Colorado law; in fact she had yet even to start her wedding business.
Why then was the issue presented in this case decided? Can there be any doubt that six members of the court issued the ruling only to require the public to follow their views? This is not the role of a court, even as activist as the current one. We still have a legislative and an executive branch. The court’s majority continues to usurp its authority in an unprecedented power grab.
Samuel Rosen
New York
Care, Not Jail, for Drug Users
To the Editor:
Re “Punitive Laws Over Fentanyl Renew a Fight” (front page, June 23):
The overdose crisis is devastating communities across this country, but putting people in jail doesn’t decrease drug use. Decades of failed punitive policies have proven that already.
It is misguided and infuriating to see opportunistic elected officials push federal and state laws to bring back long mandatory minimum prison sentences and charge people with murder if they supplied drugs that contain fentanyl and led to someone’s death from an overdose.
Criminalization and incarceration are not the answer. May was the 50th anniversary of New York’s disgraced Rockefeller drug laws, which incarcerated New Yorkers for 15 years to life for possessing a few ounces of cocaine.
And while drug use doesn’t discriminate, our drug policies do, with Black and other people of color disproportionately targeted, arrested and incarcerated for drugs.
Overdosing is a health crisis, and we should be mounting a robust health-based strategy in response. We should be making sure that people who are using drugs have naloxone, safer drug use supplies and drug checking tools. We need to provide overdose prevention centers, medication treatment access, and practical information and support.
We can’t bring back the lives we’ve already lost. But by focusing on care instead of criminalization, we can make progress in the face of a crisis that is claiming more than 100,000 lives a year.
Tony Newman
Brooklyn
The writer is director of communication for the Overdose Prevention Program at Vital Strategies.
Your Wordle Scores: Skill or Luck?
To the Editor:
I, along with so many other Times readers, must have my daily Wordle fix. Like countless other games, how you fare has both a skill and a luck component.
In Wordle’s early days, I found myself complaining (justifiably, I tell you!) that a poor score of mine was due to bad luck — when, for example, the answer was any of four possibilities and skill had no role in choosing among them.
But with the creation of The Times’s WordleBot, which evaluates your path to a winning answer and quantifies how much skill and luck got you there, we can now test the verity of — within the Wordle context at least — the adage “It’s better to be lucky than good.”
Based on 90 days or so of daily games, I compared my Wordle skill and luck scores each day with those of the entire family of Times Wordle addicts. Using a very rudimentary statistical analysis, it appears that … wait for it … it is indeed better to be lucky than good! While skill is critical to routinely doing well in the game, luck may be more than twice as important.
The next time your friend lords their better score over you, feel free to dismiss it as dumb luck. Down the road, though, your friend may have the right to do the same to you.
Neil G. Bennett
Stamford, Conn.