Robert Fried’s recent column reminded me of “liberals” advising the movement for full equality of Americans of African descent in the 1950s and ’60s that it should be more patient (Sunday Monitor Forum, May 22).
He acknowledges the rightness of the transgender equality cause but blames progressives for pushing back too hard against injustice that is based solely on fear, ignorance and hatred. His solution to the school bathroom controversy of having transgender students use faculty bathrooms or other space that is not gender designated is no different than the “separate but equal” nonsense that was overturned last century.
Overturned because the oppressed stopped being patient about the slow progress to end their oppression. Treating a trans student differently reinforces the dismal notion that there is something shameful in who they are. That is a recipe to make an already vulnerable child more likely to be seriously depressed. Is Mr. Fried ignorant of how many sexual and gender minority youth are driven to commit suicide?
I am pleased that my transgender great niece does not go to a school in such an ignorant community. I pray that all New Hampshire schools will all adopt the same policy for the benefit of all of us. There is nothing to be feared and much to be gained just as there has been in the long overdue overturning of the legacy of Jim Crow laws. Attitudes may take a long time to change but they will not change if we simply accept injustice as the norm.
J.J. Smith
Pembroke