Letters: Catholic school's rejection of transgender student hardly Jesus-like

ISSUE | INTOLERANCE

Hardly Jesus-like

I go to Mass every week with my wife and my daughters, even though I am not Catholic. I love the lessons from the Gospels. There is usually only logic and love. The politics of today, however, is another matter, far removed from the Gospels.

I smirked when I read Camden Catholic High School principal Heather Crisci's comment that refusing admission to a transgender student was "about the school's Catholic identity" ("A leap of faith: 'Hi, I'm Mason,' " Sunday).

Just last week, I was listening to the Gospel in which Jesus was sitting with the "outcasts," much to the consternation of the Pharisees. Now we have that same Church, at Camden Catholic, turning away a teenager who wants the benefits of the love and logic of Jesus. Just who have become the Pharisees now? Why reject anyone - gay, straight, divorced, transgendered? We all need the healing power of community and love. Open the doors to everyone.

|Walter Bowne, Cherry Hill, the4bownes@gmail.com

Fighting racism

Combating racial intolerance in the LGBTQA community means more than stopping discrimination in clubs and restaurants ("Taking on racism in gay community," Sunday). It means working to change the perception of the community as the white gay man and defining ourselves as the multiethnic, multicultural community we really are - not just within the LGBTQA community but to the outside world.

|David R. Fair, Philadelphia, drfair@comcast.net