Unfettered Letters

P&L District dress code

Let’s put the dress code for Power & Light District to rest once and for all. People who have pride and esteem for themselves will automatically dress properly for any occasion. Then you have people with no pride or esteem about themselves or their homes, and they dress accordingly. They don’t care if they look like a freak from a sideshow or something the cat dragged in.

I don’t like being around these uncouth people any more than you do, but they are here to stay. Since this is a free society, we are forced to tolerate them. If these uncouth people have the money for a ticket to any public event, we have no choice but to let them go. That is the price of freedom.

J.E. Hart
Overland Park

Have you forgotten what happened at Indian Springs and Bannister malls? Certain groups took over and ran the good people away, be they white, black or brown. When there are no rules, this happens.

Leave the Power & Light District alone. They have the right to certain codes and the right to refuse service. Bans can hurt businesses. Remember smoking?

Leave the business people alone. The City Council should take care of the city — streets, sidewalks and trash pickup.

Larry Brown
Prairie Village

P&L dress code

The argument between the Cordish Co. and our dysfunctional City Council over the Power & Light District dress code has degraded to the point of ridiculous. As a business owner myself, it is my prerogative to set the standards for my business. I have a simple solution to put and end to this problem. I will call it a field trip of sorts.

The Cordish Co. should rent a bus, load the City Council on board (I would also include that other dysfunctional entity known as the school board) and take the bus and park it in front of any inner city high school - next to the patrol cars - when classes are let out in the afternoon.

Then I would pose these questions: Is this what you want the Power & Light District to look like on weekend nights? Have you forgotten why people stopped going to Westport and Bannister Mall?

Stop giving us the politically correct line about "stereotyping." The "gangsta rapper look" is permeating our society. Because the line between who is real and who is not is blurry, Cordish is entitled to err on the side of caution to protect its business model and patrons.

Ricci Ballesteros
Kansas City

Hurrah for the dress code at the Power & Light District! How nice to see everyone dressed up.

To code naysayers, it is true the style of dress prohibited by the code was popularized by black youths and gang and prison culture. But now youths and young adults of all colors have adopted this dress as their own.

Just go to any public venue with no dress code, and you'll get to see kids who can't walk without holding up their pants. And you'll be treated to a display of their boxers. And guess what? They are all races. This is a fashion trend that people of all backgrounds hope will soon run its course.

Please wear work clothes to work and play clothes to play, and dress up to go out for a night on the town. And get a belt so I don't have to see your drawers.

Greg Ewing
Lee's Summit

P&L dress code

In the article “Dress code dramatics; Meeting on a proposed law featured an official waving underwear, heated words and an abrupt end to the session”(3/5, Local), it seems plain why Kansas City is becoming a town no one wants to visit, let alone live in.

The paper’s main Local section headline is about the City Council wasting time on idiotic (and apparently uncivil) debate about whether a business’s dress code discriminates. Don’t they have bigger issues to deal with? Are these council members actually paid to waste time and further their agendas, be they race-baiting or people’s “feelings” if they know a dress code but show up to force themselves into a business anyway? Let’s call them Nero Council members instead of City, because they apparently don’t care if their city is burning.

Let’s try to kill the Power & Light District — the only real development in Kansas City in the last 10 years and one of the only reasons I visit downtown.

David Nuelle
Columbia, Mo.

Keeping people out of the Power & Light District is probably not what the Cordish Co. would want to do, being a customer-driven enterprise. I agree that proper dress does make the place look better and somewhat regulates who goes there.

The Kansas City Symphony would probably like to establish a dress code, too. However we see people in shorts, flip-flops, athletic shoes, jeans and garden work clothes going and enjoying the music. It would be sad to make them go away to get dressed better to do that. I just wish that people in the community would at least acknowledge they are in public and have some pride of self to dress appropriately for the occasion. Will they still do that when they go to the new Performing Arts Center?

Clothing does not have to be couture, but appropriate. If the baggy pants are not revealing, then knock it off with the regulations. Jewelry is a fashion statement, and innocence until a law is broken should be the rule. And what’s this about white T-shirts?

Evelyn Childers
Kansas City

P&L District dress code

Once again, I am appalled at the dress code imposed in the Kansas City Power & Light District (2/28, Local, “Cordish faults proposed law on dress code"). At least Cordish has accidentally admitted that its code is intended in part to impose its taste in clothing on its patrons, underscoring the discriminatory nature of the practice.

Cordish bans, among other things, baggy pants, untucked or oversized white T-shirts and combat boots. I’m tempted, once again, to put on my Liz Claiborne white T, leave it untucked over my Liz Claiborne baggy jeans, tucked into my Doc Martens British racing green high-top leather boots, and sashay my small, female, white Anglo-Saxon booty downtown to see if I am admitted or denied entrance.

Come on, people. You know bigotry when you see it. I don’t know if the Kansas City ordinance will pass constitutional scrutiny, but I’m convinced that the dress code it is designed to prevent would not.

Corinne Corley
Kansas City

The proposed dress code ordinance for the downtown entertainment district and last year’s law prohibiting smoking in bars and restaurants are strikingly similar in that both are good causes encased in very bad laws. The net effect is that we are gradually eroding the right of business owners to operate their businesses as they see fit.

Let’s recognize that as we create laws to attend to every need and preference in society, we are sacrificing another slice of our free enterprise system. If that’s not important to anyone, then we will steadily regulate ourselves to the point that small businesses are no longer viable and disappear. The remaining choices will be to work for the government or a large, government-subsidized corporation.

Tom Owens
Kansas City

P&L District dress code

I don’t see how a dress code in the Power & Light District can be construed as discrimination (2/26, Local, “Dress-code limits debated”). To me discrimination is excluding people due to something beyond their control, such as race, sex or a disability. Your race does not dictate how you should dress.

I live just blocks from the Power & Light District and make it down there with some regularity. I have seen people of all races making their weekend trip to our new entertainment area. None of them are in formal wear. They’re not necessarily even dressed up. They just put some decent, clean clothing on.

Go to any clothing store and they will tell you that pants are designed to be worn around the waist. They will also inform you that your waist is located nowhere near you knees. As a 24-year-old male living downtown, I don’t feel like I’m too out of touch with the youth of America. But it doesn’t matter what race you are, trashy is trashy.

In the words of so many great Americans, pull your pants up!

Kelly Roberson
Kansas City

Support for ERA in Kansas

Kansas is debating whether to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the Kansas Constitution (2/26, Local).

The opposition is trying to frame the debate by making the slippery-slope and fear arguments. They make the usual charges of abortion conspiracy, that it will invalidate rape laws, and that it would d be a pathway to gay marriage. Beyond the fact that these arguments are absurd, one must only look to the 22 states that have ERAs to know the claims are ridiculous.

Many states with ERAs have stricter abortion laws, and Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania courts have held that their ERAs do not allow for any change to abortion provisions existing in their states. The 22 ERA states all have laws against rape, and we already have an anti-gay marriage amendment.

When all fear and smear are debunked, the ERA is simply a collective constitutional commitment. It incorporates into the Constitution the prohibition of sex discrimination. While there are federal and state laws that address sex discrimination, it’s not the same as a constitutional commitment. Laws can be repealed and revoked at any time.

Support the ERA.

Marla Patrick
State Coordinator, Kansas National Organization for Women
Lindsborg, Kan.

Dress-code ‘discrimination’

I would like to take a minute to thank the American Civil Liberties Union for all their hard work protecting the rights of us citizens. Take the dress code in the Power & Light District (2/26, Local, “Dress-code limits debated; Civil-rights advocates support the planned city ordinance. Business groups worry that it could restrict their rights”). Why do businesses think they have the right to say what I can or can’t wear in their establishment?

In fact, I plan on contacting the ACLU, because I feel I’ve been discriminated against. Why shouldn’t I be able to go in and pay for my gas or buy my groceries without having to worry about wearing shoes? Why can’t I enjoy a burger at my favorite restaurant without being burdened by a T-shirt? All of the businesses with a “no shirt, no shoes, no service ” sign are trampling on my civil rights.

After we take care of this, we can move on to the businesses with the “concealed weapons prohibited” signs. I call discrimination and racism.

Dylan Borns
Grain Valley

Many gay couples are great parents

Christie Jessee (2/24, Letters, “Same-sex unions”) cites a lack of masculine or feminine parental influence for children of gay couples as justification for gay marriage bans. However, even if it were true that fatherless or motherless families are less than ideal, that is no reason to deny gay couples equal marriage rights.

If only those who would be ideal parents could marry, no one would be married. We don’t grant or deny heterosexual couples the right to marry based on their presumed level of fitness as parents. Why make an exception for gay couples?

Many gay couples already have children, and many make excellent parents despite whatever challenges such families must face. The welfare of these children is better served if their parents have the right to marry than if they do not. We are doing these children no favors by treating their parents as second-class citizens.

Chad Inman
Kansas City

Power & Light District dress code

Thank goodness the Kansas City Council has decided to act on the seminal issue of our time: the dress code at the Power & Light District (2/21, Local, “Council reviews Power & Light clothing code; Proposal would prevent developers that get city subsidies from imposing many tough restrictions”). I applaud their efforts to reduce standards.

The very idea of holding high standards and expecting the public to comply discriminates against those who want to wear jeans halfway down their backsides. Think about the white T-shirt industry and all the business they’ll lose if patrons are forced to wear a shirt of a different color. Catastrophe.

Thanks again, City Council, for attacking this important issue. What’s next? Solving the city’s public school problem?

Mike Weaver
Lansing

Same-sex unions

I am grieved that partners Lisa Marie Pond and Janice Langbehn were not able to be together as Lisa died (2/17, Opinion, “Anti-gay policies simply cruelty, hatred wrapped up as morality”). I wish Lisa had brought a health-care directive with her on their trip so that there would have been no legal way to keep her from the one she loved.

I am glad Janice is suing the hospital, and I hope she wins. But in my compassion, I am not willing to embrace the illusion that same-sex unions are the same as heterosexual marriage.

Children raised by two women are missing the essential masculine influence only a father can provide (as so eloquently described by Barack Obama in his 2008 Father’s Day speech). Children raised by two men are deprived of the feminine nurture unique to mothers (which science has rather clinically identified as hormonally inspired).

While families take many forms in modern society, there can be no substitute for the ideal gender complementarity found in marriage. Laws seeking to preserve this ideal are founded not on hatred of homosexuals but concern for the children of our future.

Christie Jessee
Kansas City

It would be incomprehensible for a husband not to be admitted to his wife’s bedside at a hospital, and columnist Leonard Pitts sees right through the charade of Florida’s Marriage Protection Amendment.

Despite a slow integration of openly gay and lesbian citizens into our society, there is still much work to be done for everyone to be treated with equality and fairness as witnessed in the case in Florida. Glass ceilings, racism and homophobia are all wounds upon our nation, still waiting to be healed.

Heartland Men’s Chorus addresses these issues in our next concert, “And Justice for All,” featuring the songs of the civil rights movement, March 28-29 at the Folly Theater. As Kansas City’s gay men’s chorus, we take these issues seriously and address them through our music for those who want to hear it and, more important, for those who need to hear it.

Joseph P. Nadeau
Artistic director, Heartland Men’s Chorus
Kansas City