Inaccurate depiction

Mike Masterson’s op-ed “At a crossroads” decried “a Biden administration bent on erasing various gender needs while enforcing shared housing between the school’s 1,500 male and female students.” Mike apparently obtained his information from an op-ed by the president of the College of the Ozarks in Missouri. The president of the college asked, “Will our country allow the whims of elite opinion to impose a novel redefinition of humanity on ordinary citizens? Or will we stand up for the fundamentals of freedom that were endowed … by the Constitution?” The Christian president must have forgotten those fundamentals of freedom were endowed to all American citizens regardless of gender.

President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 13988 was based on the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” In the June 2020 case Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., the U.S. Supreme Court expanded its interpretation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits employment discrimination. The court decided that the act’s protection of employees on the basis of sex also protects employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The court acknowledged there may be additional issues that will need to be addressed in later cases involving religious freedom and the use of locker rooms and bathrooms. With this court decision applying to all applicable federal agencies, Biden added gender identity or sexual orientation to the list protected from discrimination. For those of you whining about radical liberals and elites, this decision was written by Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch.

The executive order does not force men and women to share the same rooms or showers as Mike states; it would require every student to be given access to equal accommodations.

At one time Mike was an excellent investigative journalist, as he will often inform us. Has he now become too lazy to check facts before writing such drivel as this?

KENNETH WEBER

Greenbrier