When is a hate crime not a hate crime (“Outrage follows Cal Poly gay marriage project,� News, Nov. 11-18)? When the Cal Poly art department says it isn’t? I don’t think so.
There is a line you don’t cross, even in the name of free speech. You don’t paint a swastika on a synagogue, you don’t burn a cross on your neighbor’s lawn, and you don’t install public art equating gay marriage with bestiality only days after a divisive election that appealed to the basest instincts of hate and fear in the most uneducated, highly armed segment of our population.
How many Matthew Shepards will die before people get it?
Anne Allen
Los Osos
This article appears in Nov 18-25, 2004.