Readers Write 11/19

EMPLOYMENT

Discomfort with others no reason to break law

Georgia legislative counsel Sewell Brumby is uncomfortable about working with a transgender person (“Hired as a man; fired as a woman,” Metro, Nov. 9). Change seems to frighten him. But, since when is feeling uncomfortable about change a justifiable reason for skirting civil and moral law?

In 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which made many people uncomfortable. It took courage, but it was the morally correct thing to do. Women’s suffrage made many men and not a few women in this country uncomfortable. Interfaith and interracial marriages have caused considerable social unease, and so did school desegregation.

Why should transgender persons be relegated to joblessness simply to appease those who desire to live more easily with discrimination than they can with discomfort?

Discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender persons continues unabated in the political debates in Georgia. The rhetoric is, frankly, ignorant in the face of what should be convincing research and knowledge.

Dale G. Merkle, Atlanta

MEDIA

Be correct: A man in a dress is still a man

Come on, AJC! “Hired as a man; fired as a woman”? If a man started wearing a monkey costume to work, would the headline have read: “Hired as a man; fired as an ape”? Just because the subject of your article, Glenn Morrison, started dressing as a woman to work doesn’t suddenly make him a “her.”

Your newspaper is one that some reasonable people rely on for objective truth — not for the reinforcing of confused and aberrant mind sets.

Stop trying so hard to constantly be “politically correct,” and start being correct: job one of any sound and impartial institution of quality journalism.

The courts and hospitals would classify this person in their records as a male, no matter what they were wearing. Shouldn’t the press?

Robert Hill, Atlanta

HEALTH CARE

Reform is indeed constitutional

Yes, Mr. Barr, I have read the Constitution, and I believe that the government is well within the authority of the Constitution when it is considering health care legislation (“Constitutional ignorance reigns,” Opinion, Nov. 9).

The preamble to the Constitution clearly includes among its purposes the establishment of justice, the promotion of the general welfare and the securing of the blessings of liberty to the people and our posterity.

Health care is a matter of justice. Health care clearly promotes the general welfare. And health care certainly contributes to the securing of the blessings of being an American.

The fact that health care is not enumerated cannot be construed to deny it as among the other rights retained by the people. Whatever your concerns may be about proposed health care legislation, the existence of such legislation cannot be construed as unconstitutional.

Davis Byrd, Canton