Even as an ardent supporter of a total public-smoking ban (and not the castrated version that was passed recently), I had no faith in the validity of reports detailing the dangers of secondhand smoking [Slant, "Puff, Puff, Bash," Michael J. McFadden, June 29, 2006]. I viewed smoking in restaurants, bars and any other indoor locations not as a risk, but as a nuisance.

The Surgeon General, however, has now said that secondhand smoke is more than an annoyance—it is an "indisputable" health hazard—joining the federal and California state Environmental Protection Agencies in denouncing secondhand smoke. Since they seem woefully dependent on health concerns as a shield behind which to hide from smoking-ban critics, the Surgeon General's conclusion will, hopefully, give City Council and the mayor the testicular fortitude to take the proposed amendment even further and ban indoor smoking in public outright.

Mike McCrossen
East Falls

McFadden manages, once again, to reasonably and logically explain why tobacco control and those public officials who promote more government intrusion into our lifestyle choices are less trustworthy than city street punks and thieves. At least thieves and punks do not attempt to disguise themselves as charitable gentlemen with the public's best interests at heart. In addition, McFadden continues to expose the unsound science used to promote unreasonable panic in our society.

Garnet Dawn Scheuer
Lake Bluff, Ill.

Politicians know that 80 percent of the public doesn't smoke and that's where the votes are. Politicians would rather be popular than right. I hate to admit it, but there sure are a lot of gutless wonders in politics.

Thomas Laprade
Thunder Bay, Ontario

City Paper was my "voice" when I was younger through the Streetshots photo column and other assignments [Naked City, "Paper Trail," June 22, 2006]. Not bad for a kid in his late teens (I shot my first cover story while still in high school) and early twenties. I try to keep track of the paper out here, but I always get all nostalgic on one hand, and wonder who half the people you guys are talkin' about are on the other (which, for me, is weird!). Nice to see the city doing so well, by the way; I'm lovin' Mike Regan's work as well and missing my Tastykakes and soft pretzels (especially fresh ones at 10th and Washington at 4 a.m.) Thanks for the shout out.

Mpozi Mshale Tolbert
Indianapolis

Ed: Tragically, Tolbert passed away while working at the Indianapolis Star on Monday. He was 34 and will be deeply missed by the City Paper family.

You must have searched for those pro-union letters [Feedback, "Power to Which People?" June 22, 2006] the way you searched for that nonstory of the supposed union activities at White Dog [Cover, "Bite the Hand," Doron Taussig, June 15, 2006], which in actuality was just an internal struggle of misguided/dumb kids against a nice owner and all the other employees. That's it, I am done with City Paper. Luckily, I can see Tom Tomorrow online. You guys have totally lost the will to do the right thing.

Marc Grika
Cherry Hill, N.J.

Ed: If by "searched" you meant "opened your letters-to-the-editor e-mail folder," we most certainly did. Kind of like ...

The need for a union at White Dog is about more than the ideals of a few young white liberals. In my short stint as a dishwasher at the White Dog Cafe, I (a 30-year-old immigrant/colored worker) knew workers who had been washing dishes for years without any opportunity for advancement. If you could stick it out in the hell hole of a dish room, they were not about to let you go anywhere else or teach you skills beyond cleaning up after the privileged kitchen staff. Dish room workers were eager to join the unionization effort.

All this talk of "living" wages and health care seems to exclude a very important aspect of a fair work environment: the need to feel that you are appreciated and to have assurance that you will be treated justly. This is something that workers can only gain when they are organized and united.

Eduardo Soriano-Castillo

Community/Labor Organizer, Jobs With Justice

I was the official photographer for Sunshine Foundation and was thinking that I'd choked back enough tears … until I read [Philly Blunt, "Before Their Time," Brian Hickey, June 29, 2006]. You got me going again. Thank you for such a heartfelt report.

Richard Green
Newtown

In [a recent] edition of the Metro, I read a letter to the editor by Carol Bangura, executive director of Raising Awareness Immediately. One of the quotes of her letter was, "The overcrowding at family court regarding custody issues is because of "baby mama/father drama.' Why? Our organization, Raising Awareness Immediately (RAI), educates the public on the importance of getting along.... Children mimic the behaviors they see." Perhaps Ward should be studying at this woman's feet.

There is no debating the fact that it takes two to make a baby, and the fathers of her children should should step up to the plate and take responsibility. But Ward's judgement (or lack thereof) should also be questioned [Philly Blunt, "Happy Baby Daddy's Day," Brian Hickey, June 22, 2006]. This is a woman who has a life-threatening illness, who not only got pregnant by men who were clearly not ready to be responsible adults, but did so with this illness and put her health at risk even further via pregnancy. One would think a person who's had more than 20 operations, poor choices in men, and, as she claimed on her Web site, has degrees, would be able to practice birth control.

The fact that City Paper chose to focus on this woman only reinforces the negative stereotypes of not only African-American single mothers and single parents as a whole. There are many single parents out there who work hard to provide for their children and steer them on the right path, and do not use a poorly designed Web site, post pictures of the "baby daddies" and the children they fathered, or have a message board in which to denounce those who respectfully disagree with her as "haters."

"Children mimic the behaviors they see." I hope this won't be the case for Ward, or she'll be back in family court as a grandmother under the age of 30.

Stephanie Seymour
Northeast Philadelphia

I am female and I don't have a problem with outing these men, but I also think the site should take on the responsibility of teaching women and men what their responsibility is to life and making life. For those of you who know the story, God our father prepared a place for us (his children) before he made us. Require these men to create for a place for you before they are allowed to procreate. Children should be produced in mental and spiritual comfort, otherwise it is an undisciplined act of desperation and w(re)ck-creation. Their are too many men who think being men means sending sperm into enemy territory and conceiving a being to let it fight for crumbs at best and starve to death, spiritually and physically. I have no problem with charging a man for storage and maintenance of his genetic material, but girls, raise your standards for what you let set up residence. Don't let them trash the temple, and your body is a temple. I don't fault [Fadia Ward] for [her] predicament because, like Oprah says, America has gone wrong and we have all been dumbed down and left vulnerable. Every aspect of society has failed to teach us the purpose of morality. It is intended to be a protection against external attacks on our (men, women and children's) ability to survive.

Eugenia Wilson
Detroit

I just want to show some support for this woman; she is holding her ground to accomplish her goal.

Nicole Latney
Lower Northeast

Ed: The author of this letter designed Ward's Web site.

I have compassion for any woman who had her first child at 13 because that means society and her parents failed her. But I have no compassion for someone having three more children without being able to support them. I'm not trying to put down what she's trying to do, or say that deadbeat dads are OK. Nor am I trying to say that birth control is fully a woman's responsibility. It certainly isn't. But as a 24-year-old woman, I strongly believe that you have to take responsibility for your actions, regardless of whether anyone else takes responsibility for theirs. I wish her the best of luck.

Inna B.
Rhawnhurst

As a true Philadelphian, a girl who has waitressed her way through college, and finally gotten out of the industry to take on her career, I think these girls who consider themselves to be pro-union and for "the people" are a group of whiney waitresses, who are entertained by the dramatic situations they are involved in. The White Dog sounds like the best resturaunt to be a part of in all of Philadelphia. One who is taking a waitressing job seriously in this way, needs not to be taken seriously. GET A REAL JOB! As for Judy: I think what you are doing is a great hope for all young girls/guys trying to make an extra buck.

Hillary Spiel
Center City

Please forward my little prayer bundle to Judy Wicks. The prayer within goes, "Dear God, please save my country, and don't let the lefties kill themselves off infighting over stupid things—like trying to unionize a shrine to good business (and life) practices, even though it is good to be enlightened and know it normally makes sense to unionize."

I haven't been to the White Dog lately, but I parked outside a big concrete Wal-Mart the other day. While I waited for a friend, I pulled sweet mulberries from some trees growing by the parking lot and thought about shopping there while the employees worked without union support, benefits, or much pay, and I felt a little sick.

Yes, it's silly to think of the White Dog employees picketing Wal-Mart instead of trying to better their own lives—or is it?

Jennifer French
Flourtown

It must've been a very slow week for anything of importance. Unions are a non-issue for any restaurant anywhere in America (unless it's in a hotel, convention center or does over $20m/yr). The real story is that three young girls got their first job, were probably held accountable for their actions and didn't like being told they were wrong. They would have done this wherever they happened to work in this point of their lives. They're not just young, they are young and stupid.

How misguided can they be? With so many really important issues out there, so many really bad people that they could be fighting against, they could be helping people that really need help. They're picking on one of the truly great Philadelphians, one of the great "givers" of our society.

Peter Herman
Center City

There is a simple criterion for determining whether the White Dog Cafe, or any workplace, should unionize: A majority of its workers should want a union. What anybody else has to say about it—management included—is neither here nor there; these are choices a workforce makes for itself.

Additionally, there is no intrinsic reason why, in this case, a choice to the affirmative must be interpreted as a personal affront to its owner. Unions exist for employees to organize themselves around common concerns—whether they are changing horrible working conditions or preserving excellent ones (e.g. in the case of new management or change of ownership). Presuming a workforce and its management already share many of the same values, there is no reason why putting an agreement "in writing" cannot be a cooperative, rather than hostile, experience. That is, unless one or both sides insist on making it so.

J.R. Boyd
Italian Market

I really hope the arguments Christine Flowers makes on behalf of her clients are more cogent than those in [Slant, "Tempered Tantrum," June 15, 2006]. She seems to share the view, nurtured and advanced ever more brazenly by the religious right, that freedom of religion includes the freedom to impose one's religious dogma on others. As an attorney, she should know better.

Everyone who chooses to offer adoption services in Massachusetts must abide by the anti-discrimination provisions of that Commonwealth's constitution and statutes. Flowers seems to feel that Catholic Charities of Boston should get a pass, so that they might follow a religious imperative to impose their sexual mores on the population at large. By that tortured logic, a health department inspector who was an Orthodox Jew might claim the right to deny a license to restaurants that served non-kosher food, a hotel owner belonging to one of the "Christian Identity" sects could exclude Jews and blacks, and an interstate bus line run by devout Muslims could deny boarding to those deemed to be "infidels," all with impunity and in the name of religious freedom. That's the sort of sectarian warfare that the First Amendment was designed to avoid.

There is a clear alternative for Catholic Charities of Boston, and anyone else whose religious convictions dictate intolerance of the private choices of others: If you can't stand the heat of anti-discrimination laws, get out of the public service kitchen.

Alan M. Silverblatt
Philadelphia

It's hard to know where to start with Christine Flowers' unbelievably poor arguments against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit at the end—her straw-law banning hate speech. This is an issue completely separate from the issue of same-gender marriage, and it is obvious that such a completely wrongheaded law is incredibly unlikely to ever be passed, and if it were, it would be unconstitutional. We've had laws on the books for decades proscribing various sorts of discrimination, and hate speech hasn't been criminalized yet; there's no reason to suggest that expanding equal protection under the law to gay and lesbian people would change that.

Flowers' analysis of the unfortunate decision by Catholic Charities of Boston to end its adoption program rather than allow adoptions to gays and lesbians is equally flawed. First, while the attention surrounding same-sex marriage in Massachusetts is what brought the issue to a head, the state legislature passed a law more than 10 years ago prohibiting "orientation discrimination." While the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriage almost certainly strengthened interpretation of that statute, it was that statute, not the Supreme Court's decision, that forced Catholic Charities' hand. Additionally, she characterizes Catholic Charities as having "few or no ties to the secular government." In fact, their adoption work was funded in large measure by the state, and most of the children that they were placing were foster children in the care of the state. No wonder then, that the state felt their laws should apply.

Finally, I'd like to endorse Flowers's assertion that the religious freedom aspect of the same-sex marriage debate deserves more respectful discussion. Under the current laws, all of the marriages sanctioned by the Catholic Church are also recognized by the state. However, only some of the marriages under the care of the Chestnut Hill Friends (Quaker) Meeting that I belong to enjoy similar recognition. The same goes for the marriages performed in some other Quaker meetings and many congregations of the Reform and Reconstructionist movements of Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church. These congregations and others that offer marriage equality to their gay and lesbian adherents do so with the caveat that the state does NOT recognize religious freedom on this issue. I only ask that these churches get what the Catholics already have: state recognition of all their marriages.

Thomas Taylor
Mt. Airy