GRAMER: Column dead wrong

Unfair?

Your guest columnist on March 27 spoke about what he believed to be unfairness in two Idaho state measures that were recently passed.

The first one prohibits transgender athletes from participating in girl’s/women’s sporting events. Can you imagine being a dedicated female athlete, training hard before and after school, competing across the region and maybe the state, doing absolutely everything you possibly can to be the best athlete you can be, then suddenly competing against a person who has a male’s bone and muscular structure, who last month decided he wanted to become a girl? Absolutely no one, except an agenda-driven activist, could possibly believe that this is fair for the girls against whom this gender-dysphoric person is competing. Male and female sports have been separate for a long time, and with good reason. Males and females differ significantly in their natural strength and speed. Not opinion. Fact. Biology. And to bring up Jim Crow laws to make your point? Come on!

The second law lamented by the guest columnist prohibited people who change their gender at some point in their lives from retroactively changing their birth record to reflect their current gender identity. Sorry, Mr. Guest Columnist, but opposition to this law is just silly. These are legal records. Once you start monkeying with them, there will be no end.

So go ahead, change your gender. Change your name. Just don’t demand that the rest of us ignore Mother Nature or give up on common sense.

JOSHUA COHEN

Hayden