Accommodate transgender students — within reason | Letter

Like Arnie MacDonald (“I’m celebrating the miracle that is my transgender daughter,” Opinion, June 29), I am a parent, lawyer, former community leader and spouse of a teacher. In 2016, I wrote a column supporting inclusion and accommodation of transgender students. I believe, as Attorney MacDonald does, that “public policies should be grounded in dignity, not anger” and that all children are miracles.

Public policy in Maine changed in 2019 and so has my view. No longer is making reasonable accommodations for people with gender dysphoria the rule. “Gender identity” is enshrined in law so any man or boy can enter women and girls’ spaces when they say so. “Female” is defined in statute, as any individual who “self-identifies as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth,” and dangerous medical interventions such as puberty blockers and irreversible surgery that amputates body parts, euphemistically called “gender-affirming care,” is a legal right.

These policies are not grounded in dignity because they deny the truth, are harmful to kids, and discriminate against women and girls. Being female is a biological reality, not a feeling, diagnosis, identity or costume. Gender is a spectrum of sex-based stereotypes that for some is a prison. Those with gender dysphoria deserve compassion and protection under the law, not a pass.

It is not “hate” to protect the dignity, safety and civil rights of women and girls, and I refuse to be complicit in an ideology that denies the truth, normalizes the dissociation of body and soul, and denies women and girls protected single-sex spaces.

Cynthia Dill
Cape Elizabeth