As a follow-up to last week’s New York Times article in the City section about The Cock, in which the name of the bar was not explicitly stated, today there’s this letter:

To the Editor:

In “Looking for Mr. Right Now” (March 13), you refuse to identify the subject of the article, a gay bar in the East Village, by its name. You coyly describe the bar, the Cock, as being “named for the red neon rooster in the window.”

As you know, the word “cock” has more than one meaning, only one of which might be considered inappropriate enough to suppress for fear of what your more tender-eared readers might say.

The owners of the Cock gave their bar an amusing name that can pass in civil conversation while carrying a more adult indication of the establishment’s nature. Your decision to exclude the bar’s name from the article reflects both a depressing lack of humor and a disturbing allegiance with the campaign against “indecency” that steadily threatens to turn our society into one big day care center.

Matt Larsen
Lower East Side

I’ve long been annoyed at the Times’s insistence on censoring profane language in its pages. What’s even more inane is that it’s okay to run a piece about cruising at a gay bar and print these words:

“I love it here, it’s so whorish,” he said. Like everyone else interviewed, he declined to give his full name for the sake of privacy. And a little discretion. “If you want to find sex, this is the place.”

But god forbid these same readers should be exposed to the word “cock.”

The Times needs to get over itself.