Subject: IWG PECO Energy letter
From: Interfaith Working Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 23:52:31 -0400 (EDT)

April 21, 1999

Mr. Corbin McNeill, Jr.
Chairman
PECO Energy Company
2301 Market Street
PO Box 8699
Philadelphia, PA 19101

Dear Mr. McNeill:

We greatly appreciate the service that PECO Energy
provides to community groups in announcing events and
anniversaries in lights at the top of the PECO
building.  It is PECO's sign, and you certainly have
the right to do whatever you want with it.  But we
were very disturbed to read in today's Philadelphia
Inquirer that you have chosen not to allow the phrases
`gay' and `coming out' because you `are not in the
business of being enmeshed in social issues.'  It
strikes us that you have become much more `enmeshed'
by having such a policy than you would have been if
you had simply run the announcements.  

More and more religious organizations, corporations,
and local governments, including the City of
Philadelphia, are affording gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgender people the same respect, dignity, and
basic rights as everyone else.  A refusal to use the
words which millions of Americans use to identify
themselves is rapidly becoming much more controversial
than the words themselves once were. We hope and pray
that you will reconsider your policy.

Sincerely,
Barbara Purdom     Christopher Purdom
Interfaith Working Group Coordinators

The above letter went out on IWG letterhead listing 17 congregations and
organizations and 61 clergy from 15 religious traditions. If you are in 
the general Philadelphia area and represent a congregation or religious 
organization or are clergy, let us know if you want to be added - all faiths 
are welcome. We will also be happy to help start similar organizations in 
other areas.

-- 

Interfaith Working Group                Religious organizations, congregations
http://www.libertynet.org/iwg           and clergy supporting gay rights,
[email-masked]                      reproductive freedom, and the 
voice: 215-235-3050  fax: 232-0829      separation of church and state.

Sunday May 16, 1999 5pm. Marching In the Light: IWG Benefit Concert. Old
First Reformed Church. 4th and Race, Philadelphia, PA.  See the web page.