EDITOR: Congratulations to Aaron Jenkins, who as a high school senior seems to be smarter than a large portion of Seattle ["High School Neglect," May 22]. How ignorant for anyone to assume that there was not a gay student in that classroom. While I agree that the teacher had a valuable lesson at hand, I also think that maybe it went a bit too far. But we, as a society, should not accept our children and especially older people using the word "gay" to describe something we dislike, look down upon, or feel neutral about. Imagine the response if we described something crappy as being "Asian" or "African."

Aaron McCloud

TO THE EDITOR: Sandeep Kaushik's article ["Dean Scene," May 22] stated 50 Democratic Leadership Council "heavyweights" denounced Howard Dean as appealing only to aberrant and effete "McGovern-Mondale" activists who advocate "weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home." If these leaders are, in fact, heavyweights in the leadership of the Democratic Party and do, in fact, believe this of people who are attracted to candidate Howard Dean and his record and positions on various issues, why would Dean supporters want anything further to do with this Democratic Party leadership? Or do these DLC heavyweights really not believe what they announced, but just want to castigate and smear Dean and his supporters in order to make more room for a candidate more to their liking? Either way, looks like the DLC is pushing hard for a second coronation of the Bush regime.

Scott Seymour, via e-mail

DAN SAVAGE: Unless you've been playing a long-running joke on all of your readers, you have a child. Now, I have no beef with gay parents or gay marriage. But calling children "monsters" and "shits"? [Letters, May 22] What's your problem? Do you love your own child and hate everyone else's? Do you call your kid's playmates "turds"? What do their parents think about that? Do they call you "faggot"? Though I find it hard to imagine, you were once a child. I very much doubt your parents called you such names, yet even if they did, it wouldn't serve as an excuse for your insults. Shame seems to be an alien emotion to you, but you really ought to try feeling some for a change. Abusing children isn't funny. It's sick.

Tom Davis, father of two, via e-mail

P.S. You don't even begin to get the point of Andrea Wagner's letter: The Seattle International Children's Festival isn't simply for children; it's superb entertainment for all ages. But then a snide gay critic wouldn't be caught dead in a theater full of breeders and their shitty little monsters, would he?

DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: My parents called their children "little monsters" and "little shits"--and worse. Now that I'm a parent, I'm often in the company of other parents, gay and straight, and I frequently hear them using these and other terms in reference to their own children, and to children in general. Parenting is stressful and children can be maddening--as I'm sure you're aware, Tom--and we parents sometimes vent our frustration by smiling broadly and calling kids little shits. It's better than beating them, don't you think?

As for the Wagner letter, like I said, our limited real estate sometimes forces us to be selective. Thankfully for the festival, Tom, there are two kinds of newspapers in Seattle: mainstream and alternative. We in the alternative press sometimes rely on the mainstream papers to cover things we don't have the space or inclination to cover (like children's theater festivals and Folklife), just as the mainstream papers sometimes rely on the alternative press to cover things they can't (like smoking pot and fist fucking).

I have to agree with Yasmeen's comment about the constant need to respond to your readers' letters with something that ends with YOU in the right. These are people with opinions, and it should be stated as such. Have you ever heard NPR read the listeners' letters on the air? They will read an insulting letter to NPR without having the need to come back and say, "Oh yeah? Well fuck you!" And if you are going to cite things like Harper's and the Atlantic Weekly, take a second to check their responses. They respond in a professional manner, UNLIKE your two responses this week, and the response last week to the Zak's article. You guys are never wrong, are you?

Michael R.

DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: We don't respond to all the letters we receive, Michael. A quick look through the last six months of The Stranger reveals that we ran 122 letters and responded just 6 times. In fact, the response that Jennifer Maerz wrote that upset Yasmeen was the first response to a letter in more than three months. And, yes, we are wrong sometimes. See below.

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: An article in last week's paper ["Moxie Matters" by Erica C. Barnett] incorrectly credited Moxie Media with designing a 1999 Heidi Wills city council candidate mailer. Wills' "Rosie the Riveter" mailer was designed by a different local consultant, Bill Broadhead and GSM/Mercury. We regret this error and every other dumbass error we've ever made.