THIRD FLOOR: Letters can be bruising | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

In the last few months, we've printed heated letters on the meaning of Christianity, the nature of Islam, homosexual rights in our society and the arrest of illegal immigrants.

For every viewpoint powerfully expressed, there has been an equally powerful response.

There have been times when I've been tempted to pull punches on the page, either toning down a letter or withholding it. In particular, I considered it after I got complaints about a letter on Islam from perennial writer Will Hubbard of Glen Burnie.

Mr. Hubbard writes far more letters than our once per 30 days policy allows, usually filled with ruminations on the state of our society. I have one waiting for the clock to run out, as well as submissions on "Government Control and the Free Market System" and the role of Judeo-Christian traditions in public school.

A scathing letter on the role of Islam in our culture from Mr. Hubbard set off howls of complaint, one cancellation and a chain of letters that went on for weeks. One writer complained that she had begun to dread the four-week cycle that brings Mr. Hubbard's ideas onto the letters page.

Should I stop accepting his letters? Absolutely not. It's not the merit of his ideas that I find interesting; it's the exchange of views that his letters ignite.

Many of our readers learn as much from responses to writers who ardently express their sometimes-extreme ideas as they do from the initial missives themselves. Giving up Mr. Hubbard's letters would silence many of the well-thought out and nicely composed responses.

It is tough deciding when to allow an immediate response. I will bump an interesting response to the head of the line to keep an exchange fresh. We publish 10 or so letters a week, and most letters still get published in a timely manner.

But I do usually require that a writer wait until the clock hits 30 days before allowing him to respond to any letters he generates. The idea is to discourage a tit-for-tat exchange between two people.

I've also opened our editorial page to longer opinions in the form of guest columns. So far we've published columns by elected officials explaining public policy, community members expressing detailed ideas and, rarely, responses to guest columns that seem to deserve more space to work out an intriguing argument. These columns reflect the views of the writer, not the Maryland Gazette.

I'm open to columns from almost any quarter, but reserve the right to say no and divert the writer to the letters section. If you're interested in writing one, contact me first. I'm going to look for local subjects, good writing and solid thinking.

Another regular feature on the editorial page is columnist Eric Hartley. Eric grew up in this county and has covered police and courts during his career with Capital-Gazette Newspapers.

His columns are always worth reading, even if you disagree with his viewpoint. The responses to his work, even when the writers are sure he's dead wrong, are a testament to its impact.

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We've stopped routinely accepting faxed obituaries from local funeral homes, with the hopes of making publication of our obits easier and more efficient.

Community News Editor Elyzabeth Marcussen and Editorial Assistant Debbie Legare work hard to keep on top of the large number of obituaries we publish - there are 19 in today's edition.

Occasionally, an error creeps in. One whopper that slipped through recently was a classic "Oh no, what have we done!" moment.

We identified the family contact for a deceased local resident as the subject of the obituary.

Ironically, a funeral home having difficulty with our new no-fax rule printed out the e-mail form off our Web site and faxed it to us.

Our staff is flexible, and typed it up - but failed to notice that the name at the top of the form was not the name of the deceased as it is on our old fax version. The funeral home had it right; we were flummoxed by a different format.

Fortunately, the family was understanding about the gaffe. We both corrected the error and ran the obit again.

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Rick Hutzell is the editor of the Maryland Gazette. E-mail him at rhutzell@mdgazette.com