Letters: Charen wrong on sexuality

Mona Charen’s Jan. 14 column, “Sexual mutability run amok,” made me wonder why The Spokesman-Review would print such a vile, hateful, ignorant piece.

I would like Charen to understand that accepting a person’s gender identity is not the same as encouraging it. Gender identity and sexual preference are two different things. Straight people do not become gay. Children as young as 4 do have a basic understanding of who they are and should not be suppressed to hide it. Charen should read the suicide statistics of children/adults who have grown up in that scenario.

It is not child abuse to accept, love and nurture children just as they are. To compare a child whose body is in gender conflict with wanting “to be an amputee or a one-eyed pirate” is beyond forgivable. To end her piece with the most non-compassionate and discriminatory judgment I’ve ever read – that transgender people should not have children – is absolutely unacceptable.

I would hope for two things: That Charen educate herself before learning that a relative/friend is “the face of this mania for sexual mutability (her words),” and hope that The Spokesman-Review be more discerning.

I will probably never again read anything Charen writes.

Vaughn Blethen

Moses Lake