Singled Out for Their Loss

If I judged news by The Post's headlines, I'd get a decidedly distorted world view. "Episcopalians Reject Gay Candidates" [news story, May 7] is a good example; it suggests the denomination defeated candidates for the Episcopal Diocese of California because of their sexual orientation. But of seven candidates, three were openly gay; four were living openly heterosexual lifestyles. Three straights and three gays were "rejected" in the balloting. Why does The Post's headline so distort this outcome, especially when the elected bishop announced that his own victory "remains a vote for inclusion and communion" and the voters "erupted in a deafening applause"? That doesn't sound like rejection in my book.

-- Deacon Maccubbin

Washington

The writer is founder and president of Lambda Rising bookstores.

He's a [Euphemism Here]

I was amused but confused by this sentence regarding Ryan Schreiber in the April 30 Arts story "Giving Indie Acts a Plug, or Pulling It; Pitchfork Web Site Rises as Rock Arbiter": " 'I think people assume I'm this huge, elitist jerk,' he says, though in more forceful and colorful terms." If he said it differently, why is this in quotation marks?

The sentence should have been reworded and punctuated to signal an indirect quotation to the reader. Although this is not a hard-news article, quotations are one of the few clues available for sorting out what is real from what is enhancement.