Outrage Over Cockfighting

Cockfighting is not cultural; it is cruelty (“The Sport of Exiles,” by Jesse Katz, Dec. 5). Isn’t it amazing that Katz can romanticize such a horrifying act? Isn’t there anything the “old country” offers that does not involve animal cruelty? Why do you have to pick the most barbaric, inhumane activity?

And by the way, if it was so easy for a reporter to find these places and people (and to include their names and very clear photographs of their faces), where are the cops? I want to see arrests made immediately.

Kady Lane

Los Angeles

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Cockfighting in California is not a “cultural tradition” and should not be glorified as such. It is an illegal, barbaric form of gambling in which living beings are brutally sacrificed to greed. There is no nobility, no skill involved in this bloodthirsty, drug-saturated activity that involves merely the “luck” of how long a creature can continue to strruggle for life after being cut with razors.

The Latino community must feel humiliated and insulted that it was represented in the L.A. Times by someone who gloats over his ability to break our laws and teaches his children how little life should be valued and how rewarding it can be to kill.

Phyllis M. Daugherty

Director, Animal Issues Movement

Los Angeles

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I cannot fully express my shock and discouragement over this article. Not only is it entirely devoid of condemnation of cockfighting, but it fairly drips--I use that word deliberately--with implied approval of, or at least sympathy for, the practice and those who perpetuate it. Your readers, indeed the city, deserve nothing less than an immediate and unequivocal apology for this appalling lapse in judgment.

Richard A. Blacker

Santa Monica

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Give me a break! Exiles? Culture and tradition? There is more rubbish in this article than on the streets of Los Angeles! How about respect for the laws of one’s adopted country? How about making an effort to assimilate into the mainstream culture of the United States of America?

G.M. Kohl

Burbank

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Like others who feel that all life should be protected from suffering and torture, I was going to write condemning the practice of cockfighting. But simply by describing the horrors resulting from this cruel practice, Katz’s article is all that is needed for civilized humans to be revolted.

George Wood

Malibu

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It is time for the sport of cockfighting to be legalized in the U.S. It is an integral part of life to many of our immigrant citizens and they should not be denied the entertainment of their homelands. Millions of chickens are killed daily to feed the population of America. Why should the death of a few thousand in blood sport cause such an uproar?

If this were put to a vote today, the public would legalize this noble sport.

W.R. Turner

Pasadena