Furor Over Gays in Military

As a gay African-American I found William Raspberry’s column, “Unleashing a Cultural Genie� (Commentary, Jan. 28), uniquely depressing. That an African-American, in light of this country’s longstanding racist history, should seek to find a middle ground for bigotry directed at another minority in order to “protect the culture� is reprehensible in the extreme.

Doesn’t Raspberry realize that the hysteria-created image of the gay or lesbian so unable to control his or her sexual desires as to unhinge the entire social order is as one with the myth of black male sexual superiority, and its supposed dangers? Has he forgotten the outcry over the specter of this myth being raised at the Hill-Thomas hearings? Has he forgotten that had not the “private values� he so cherishes been challenged, both of us would now be in chains?

DAVID EHRENSTEIN

Los Angeles