May 31, 2023, R-C Letters to the Editor

Transgender issue divisive

Editor:

On May 16, I attended, via Zoom, the Douglas County School District Board meeting at which transgender access to bathrooms, sports and locker rooms were discussed. 

During the meeting, people spoke passionately for and against the item proposed by the Board.  We also heard statistics about the mental health of our students, especially those who are LBGTQ.  The Trevor Project, a group focused on mitigating youth suicide, reports that their Nevada statistics include suicidal ideation at 45 percent and actual attempts at 14 percent. Both of those statistics are substantially higher than the .03 percent of our 5,000 students, about 15 students, who identify as transgendered, according to our board president.

We all know the damage that has been done to our children in our pandemic times. They are at incredible risk for learning loss.  Our test scores have fallen. Let’s figure out how to solve those issues rather than finding a solution in search of a problem.

I am concerned that our community, as we heard clearly expressed at the meeting on May 16, 2023, will be irrevocably divided. Our job is to find ways to support our community and students, not tear them apart. No one benefits from this divide.

Additionally, this issue has come to the attention of the Nevada Legislature. There is a pending bill that would make this sort of discrimination unlawful in our state and subject an offending district to daily monetary penalties. As well, Nevada’s voters, agree or not, approved a 2022 initiative that added language to the Nevada constitution specifically addressing this issue. Between the constitutional amendment approved by voters, the pending bill, which is likely to pass, and the threatened lawsuit from the ACLU of Nevada, which is likely to succeed, this effort will be very expensive. What else could those funds be used for? Credit recovery? Tutoring? Literacy coaching? Classroom materials? 

There are very few students who identify as transgender in our district. I believe the kindest and least destructive means of resolving this is on an individual basis, one family at a time. I also think transgender students would feel both heard and included using this resolution.

I hope that this Board will reconsider this fraught idea and take a more practical path.

Cheryl Blomstrom

Jacks Valley

Feelings are tricky

Editor:

A letter in the May 24 RC described this to be an individual whose inside “feelings” don’t match their outside biological design…and that gender can be the internal “feeling” of being someone outside the traditional understanding of men and women…that our understanding has “evolved” more or less without excuse, having been “documented back to 5000 BC.”

I don’t know about that. “Feelings” are fickle. They change. All this inside outside confusion would be better addressed if approached honestly. It was made pretty clear in the beginning what we were meant to be. Nothing about it has evolved; gender is indeed “who you are,” ie.  a fact of cre-ation with biological purpose, not a “feeling.”  The eunuch (Matthew 19:12) is the only exception given. 

Studies years ago found less than 2 percent of homosexuals were a physiological condition…that sex role-reversals were predominately a chosen lifestyle and preferred behavior.  How much mo-reso today with our encouragement to follow “feelings” under the guise of physiology. 

 It is not surprising that reportedly 82 percent of transgenders consider suicide - suffering both from internal “feelings” that don’t match outside gender, and simultaneously from “fear” of rejection and persecution upon coming out.  Talk about d——- if you do and d——- if you don’t.

Rather than walk with them in “tight-fitting shoes,” ideally the grace, dignity, and kindness of caring adults will “figure out” how to lovingly lift them out of theirs and put on the correct fit. Voilá... Cinderella — and her prince.

Joy Uhart

Minden

Backing Knecht for county manager

Editor:

Responding to Commission Chairman Mark Gardner’s May 24 Letter to the Editor on his decision to limit the first round of the search for a new county manager to internal candidates, Gardner fails to recognize the shortcomings of his decision.  First, extending the first round to other qualified outside candidates would not decrease the positive reasons for hiring from within.  It would, however, increase the likelihood of giving serious and immediate consideration to better qualified candidates than the pool of existing employees.  Replacing the county manager with an outsider adds to the leadership resources within the county and does not decrease the institutional memory of existing employees as they continue their employment with the county.

Secondly, the financial challenges facing our county require the highest sophistication in money management and governmental legal and accounting complexities.  The daunting financial challenges of our county include this year’s huge unfunded budget for capital improvement projects such as the addition and changes to the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, constructing and paving Muller Parkway within the deadline, and the non-existent funding for the maintenance of all the roads that the county is obligated to but does not take care of. 

What is most frustrating about Gardner’s letter to the editor is that Gardner knows that there is a stellar outsider candidate available to manage our county.  He is our former Nevada State Controller Ron Knecht.  Ron was first runner-up in our national search for a new county manager four years ago when Patrick Cates was selected, and he is ready and willing to serve our county in this capacity today.  Our insulated and short-sighted leadership within County Hall has worsened under Patrick Cates and Mark Gardner’s leadership and could improve if the best qualified candidate for county manager would be the most important consideration in this recruitment. 

Jeanne Shizuru

Gardnerville Ranchos

Hildebrand has community at heart

Editor:

Having had the privilege of being a long time Genoa resident, and the recipient of the excellent journalism of Kurt Hildebrand, it is appropriate to make the following comments:

1. He has the interests of the community at heart, and for him, they are paramount. His writings are an important source of knowledge concerning weather, culture, law enforcement; they avoid the detritus of ‘barnyard fowl pecking at each other in celebration of their miss-placed ambitions.’

2. In other words, he does not take sides.  

3. He does, however, ensure that communiques to The Record-Courier are characterized by the decorum, respect, and civility so lacking in the current political dialogue, and in much of the yellow journalism we endure.

4. He knows what and where Ruhenstroth is, and that it should not be  used to rhyme with ‘Muhlenberg’ in a John Prine - or other - lyric.

William D. McCann

Genoa