LETTERS

Last week's As We See It piece on the porn industry's HIV scare brought this stab at common sense from a reader:

In response to your article "Risky Business": Of course condom use should be required, by law, in the porn industry. It doesn't matter whether or not other countries require it; we don't base our workplace safety laws on the standards in effect elsewhere. The girls in the business (many barely out of high school and coming from traumatizing or abusive backgrounds) are in no position to stand up for themselves. And arguments that condoms "destroy the fantasy" are so pathetic when confronted with the reality of the 22-year-old Canadian girl whose three-month porn career has now made her HIV-positive.

Stacy J. Willis' cover story last week about anti-billboard crusaders prompted a heated response from the unlike-minded. A sampling:

Who cares about the dire homeless situation in Las Vegas? Who cares about the "water crisis" facing Las Vegas? Who cares about the fact that the Valley might soon house toxic waste? ... No!! Apparently the real issue Las Vegans must confront is the "indecent" and downright evil billboards!!! Especially those evil billboards on I-15. I-15? Yeah, while I'm busy trying to get away from dumb tailgaters, dodge moronic lane-changers who don't seem to know what a turn signal is and pass idiots who obviously don't know what the speed limit is, I have the time to ponder those evil "indecent" billboards. I even have the time to admire those "shadows" that serve a "purpose to solicit emotion" on the crotches of women. Which has this simpleton, Shari Peterson, in such shambles. Oh, the horror!

Who are these wastes of space? These wastes of life. This is LAS VEGAS. Don't tell me these morons didn't know this was "Sin City" before moving here. And who are YOU to tell ME what is "indecent" and "immoral"? Evil is just that which you hate. To me, religious and "attorney at law" billboards are offensive. Your hairdo, Shari, is offensive to me.

What's next? No more blacks or Hispanics on billboards?

Moreover, I want to know what decrepit crevice this Shari Peterson has been hiding in to be so astounded by the fact that businessmen have "prostitutes brought to their rooms." Oh, the horror! And then you have the nerve to quote Mel Gibson. A person who has made one of the most bloody and violent movies ever made. Oh, but I'm sure that's OK to show your "precious" children. A little anti-semitism does a body good, right, Shari?

Shari, you and these other clowns are the ones who need to go. You are the ones that need to be banned. You are the ones that are the complete antithesis to true freedom. You are the ones that pose the biggest threat to the future of America. You are the ones that are trying to make America the place our forefathers fought against. And you are the ones that are the biggest dangers to your "precious" children. (The children you want "to have a pure, innocent childhood." By moving them to Las Vegas?)

In the 30-plus years I've been in Las Vegas, this is one of the few times I will side with the casinos.

It's so sad to think that while American soldiers are dying to defend us against religious extremists, the soldiers who survive are going to come back to a country overrun and RUINED by religious extremists like you.

Do us all a favor and move to a more "wholesome" city. Leave us freethinkers alone!

I just have to ask: You passed around pictures of exposed nipples? From billboards? Jesus, just how hard were you staring at the damn sign? I mean, that'd be like me (a straight male) running around, claiming to hate c--k, and yet here I am, snapping up picture after picture of c--k and showing everyone. Like, "Gee, just look at all this c--k! I tell you, there is just c--k everywhere …"

Try Orlando if you want a family environment. It's practically The Stepford Wives down there. And though I enjoy seeing what passes for an important issue in those cushy ol' suburbs, it'd be nice if its white-bread-craving inhabitants could just channel all that energy toward a cause outside of their gated, fortress-like enclosures. That a mere nipple-slip could be enough to drive away hunger has me hoping to God that Shari Petersen's kid doesn't someday peek into the back of this publication—or she's likely to shit herself.

Grow up. Or, even better, try some actual parenting, which involves more than just deceiving your children into believing that the world is in fact very much like old '50s sitcoms.

Unfortunately, these parents have yet to reach a comfort level involving their own bodies, so explaining its many functions to their kids is a truly terrifying thought. However, we are all naked under these clothes, and even the biggest protest won't be enough to change the fact that you still have nipples, or that beneath a pair of tightly creased slacks may lurk a penis ...

One is surprised that residents of Las Vegas are attempting to remove the sin from Sin City's image. Las Vegas is not Walt Disney World. Las Vegas is a desolate and univiting rock, and if it were not for gaming, adult entertainment and unavoidably sexual excess, the Valley would still be a rock.

Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the U S and much of it has to do with the 'alternatives' to lifestyle it provides. What are these people complaining about?

If Shari Peterson and other community members are not happy with glitzy Las Vegas, why don't they pack and move here to gritty Detroit? Then she and her collegues can enjoy an unemployment rate of 11 percent, zero percent growth and an auto industry that will inform her that if she is not an engineering guru she is nobody important ... that is if they don't outsource the work to India.

Last week, we ran a letter from a man peeved by Kate Silver's April 1 cover story on the execution of Larry Colwell Jr. That letter peeved this letter-writer:

In response to the letter by Mr. Ron Moers, "ex-cop," "death-penalty advocate":

He is so typical of the death-penalty advocates ... just as the Pharisees advocated the stoning to death of the adulteress as is proscribed in the Old Testament, just as it advocates death for other crimes ... Jesus so wisely told them "let he that hath no sin cast the first stone." None could, since none are sinless ... and he forgave her and would not condemn her, so I presume Mr. Moers thinks he is sinless and Jesus-like and fit to kill those he deems unfit to live.

I wonder if he will be so arrogant on Judgment Day, when he is judged with the "goats" who just like him saw no evil in their lives. Jesus will not know the hypocrite, nor will he forget the sinners who do not repent. Ironically, this condemned murderer might enter heaven, since he knew his moment and time of death and could truly repent and have no opportunity to back-slide. Will Mr. Moers be so lucky? Will he ask for forgiveness and stick too it to the end without fail? There is an irony here, the hatemongers of the world who enjoy seeking blood lust and revenge via the death penalty might find their fate much worse than those they so ardently hate and despise.

Editor's note:
Funny, the way you reserve more condemnation for death-penalty advocates—who, as far as we know, haven't actually killed anyone—than for the man who has.