To the editor: Proposals to legally define sex as binary – thus officially ostracizing the estimated 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States – recall the Indiana General Assembly's misguided 19th-century attempt to, in effect, legislate the value of the mathematical constant pi.
That attempt to affirm the value of pi by legislative fiat failed when it was noted that the General Assembly lacked the power to define mathematical truth.
In the 21st century, it is as clearly irrational to maintain that gender is binary as it is to postulate that the value of pi is rational, as was attempted not long ago. We find ourselves in a sorry situation when we have given inexperienced legislators the power to define biological “truth.”
Scott McCarty, Ventura
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To the editor: There is no small irony in Republicans' effort to exploit transphobic issues, through which they strive to counteract the electoral consequences of opposing abortion.
Consider how Republican politicians tend to sidestep pertinent policy issues by veering toward a misleading issue that more reliably incites docile, intolerant voters: for example, the possibility that a daughter will have to compete in sports against some athletically gifted transgender woman. .
Does it matter that the odds of that happening are dwarfed by the odds of a daughter one day needing an abortion? No, not to transphobic parents who tend to be willfully ignorant.
The Republican Party's shameless exploitation of such a complicated issue shows how our democracy finds itself in a polarized and fatalistic cycle.
Sandra Pérez, Santa María
