As a friend of the lesbian community, I find it irresponsible of Reuters to blame promiscuous lesbians for the devastation caused by the deadly floods in south China. The headline of a Reuters article Tuesday running in the China Daily among countless publications around the world reads, “Loose Dykes Spur China Flood Fears as Hundreds Die.” While “loose dykes” may spur a multitude of fears in today’s China– a corruption of traditional Chinese values, a shrinking pool of potential mates for single Chinese men, and a perceived Western-influenced indifference to monogamy, to name a few– I can’t comprehend how lustful lesbians would contribute to a natural disaster as severe as this summer’s flooding in China. If the news agency saw a correlation between lesbianism and rising fears of flood damage, the least the writer could have done was establish a connection in the article. Rather, Reuters just discussed how the embankments built to protect floods running along the Huai river, China’s third longest, are about to loosen and endanger millions of homes. Moreover, the flooding has taken over 500 lives, displaced millions of Chinese and caused billions of dollars in damage. The magnitude of the disaster is such that a blame game, much less one targeting a seemingly innocent sexual minority group, seems a bit boorish and borderline discriminatory. My hope is that in the future, Reuters will be more sensitive to the language it uses in its headlines and more careful about choosing headlines that reflect the nature of their stories. But most of all, I hope the “loose dykes” to which Reuters so callously refers, continue to stay strong and and keep doing what they do.

•Reuters: Loose Dykes Spur China Flood Fears as Hundreds Die

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