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Letter: Order against transgenders pushes fear
Op-Ed · August 03, 2017


Banning transgendered folk from the military is one more attempt to instill fear and hatred of “the other” by a dictatorial president.


Not that this arouses dread or anything.

Just as Jews in Nazi Germany were a numerical minority, so do the targets of this man’s disdain emerge: undocumented neighbors to name just one other.

How to speak of this? For not to speak, to not seek a voice against this is to become a 12-year-old at a Boy Scout Jamboree screaming “USA! USA!”

A march, a rally, an entry in a personal journal, howling at the moon, all these traditional modes of expression are encompassed by our Constitution.

Let us welcome them into our moral sense.

The time of silence is the time of conversion into “Good Germans.” Speak everyday, especially to the children, especially to the issue of dignity and respect and with hard Hope for the “tired and the poor.”

Whispers in the night of all this are needed as well, but even monastics sing at daybreak. Speak out, speak out now, before we let our apathy and own hatreds consume us.

Clara Oleson

West Branch