Public deserves full access to city park

Will someone please explain how camping in and littering Washington Square Park is protected under the First Amendment? It is a public space honoring our Civil War dead, not a philosophical battleground for a few citizens who chose to commandeer it. Spring is approaching; restore the park’s use to the general public, for whom it was intended. It is now urban blight.
LINDA
PERINTON

Cuomo’s pension plan makes sense

The union AFSCME wants their members to write newspapers a letter about the Tier 6 pension reform plan. Of course, they included “talking points” for me to include in this letter opposing reform.
The dilemma that I have is that I agree with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan. States and local governments are going broke; it is insane not to have some sort of reform. Why is it so bad to have union members have a 401(k) plan or contribute more to their pensions?
I do not ascribe to the class warfare argument being put forward by my leftist union operatives who are lining their own pockets. The party is over. I do not envy millionaires or Wall Street.
Please, governor, continue on.
DEBRA
SODUS, WAYNE COUNTY

Condom program endangers students

The book of Proverbs tells us: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Offering condoms to our growing children is setting them up for a life of sexual promiscuity. “There is time for everything” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). This is the time to teach them sexual continence and self-control.
What good have we done to a child by giving him condoms to have sex and later bring him to court to execute him for rape, which is a result of lack of sexual continence and self-control, which he was never taught but was offered, instead, condoms as a solution?
As of today, no single discipline or subject in the school curriculum can mold our children’s conscience and moral life, since our society has thrown moral and religious instructions out of public schools.
Condom distribution is not the right solution to this problem. Parents must reject this idea.
CHRISTOPHER
CANANDAIGUA
The writer is a staff chaplain for the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.