Letters to the editor, August 9

Reid needs to focus on doing his job

I see Sen. Harry Reid is beside himself because the Olympic uniforms for our country are being made in China. Where has Mr. Patriotic been all these years that our American flag has been made in China?

The flag of our country being made by communists is by far worse than uniforms being made there for a once-every-four-year event.

He is obviously more concerned about the uniforms than doing his job, i.e., passing a budget for the country, which he hasn't done in over three years.

It doesn't seem to phase him, collecting his pay for not doing what he is paid to do.

Gayle Maine

Carson City

Find a new word for same-sex marriage

The only thing wrong with same-sex marriage is the word "marriage." It is wrong to mess with the dictionary. What is needed is another word for the relationship between two committed adults.

"Domestic partnership" and "civil union" may provide all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities commonly and legally associated with marriage but lack the emotional and psychological "feel good" aura of the word "marriage" and are hence found unacceptable. So we need to call upon today's wordsmiths of the world to come forth with a suitable constructed word to fill the void.

Where are today's successors to Bill Safire and S.I. Hayakawa? Surely somewhere in the ranks of learned lexicographers there is someone with a solution. As a suggestion to initiate the search let me introduce a first entry: Instead of "married" let the two be "conferred." Rather than a "marriage" let there be a "conference" performed with all the appropriate pompous and pious ceremony for all their friends and relations.

If these particular words don't work for you, let them be the starting point to encourage submissions from scholars, philosophers, Greco-Roman lexicographers and academicians of all backgrounds to come forth with the necessary words to satisfy all participants and end the attack on the centuries-old dictionary definition of "marriage."

We can extricate this matter from the current morass of politics and religion. Let's do it.

Larry Taylor

Carson City