Views from readers: Mask mandate + transgender sports ban

A political decision

Gov. Tate Reeves’ decision to veto CDC guidelines by unmasking Mississippi residents may be good politics but it is bad medicine.

Christopher Murray, directors of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington recently completed and published a study showing that masking cuts the spread of the virus by 50%.

Measured in deaths, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams (during President Trump’s time in office) said that scientific studies found that if 95% of people wore a mask in group settings, 130,000 lives would be saved.

In the health vs. politics debate, our governor chose politics. Is anyone surprised?

Charles A. Boggs

Long Beach

Mail problems

The pandemic has been hard on people waiting to get their mail from the U.S. Postal Service.

Speaking of them, I found a yellow new resident form in my mailbox.

And when I find the new resident card in my mailbox when I’m still living at my address, I don’t appreciate it at all.

I understand about the pandemic. But there are a lot of people, including myself, still waiting for their mail.

Rebecca Teale

Biloxi

Bigoted view?

The idea that banning transgender student athletes from competing on girls’ teams is wrong on so many levels.

First, there’s the mistaken idea that transgender students will have an immediate advantage over biological females. Not so. The advantage goes to the athlete with the physique, training and competitive drive to excel in their chosen sport.

Second, there’s the claim that transgenders will take scholarships away from female athletes. I sincerely doubt that there are very many transgender students who want to compete in sports, let alone qualify for scholarships. At the very least, the Legislature should have some sort of statistics to back this claim.

I also doubt that straight male students are going to pretend to be transgender in order to get scholarships to compete on collegiate women’s teams. That takes one heck of a commitment at a time when most young men are trying to assert their masculinity, and could lead to expulsion and charges of fraud if their true motive is discovered.

About the only factual claim coming from the Legislature is that coaches don’t know how to handle the possibility of a transgender student playing on their team.

Rather than legislate away a student’s chance to compete, the state should look for ways to educate schools and staff members on how to be inclusive. But that would require looking past their narrow, bigoted view not just about the LGBTQ community, but about women as well.

The unspoken truth is that these legislators are saying girls are too weak to hold their own in this world without special protections, protections they don’t even consider providing for boys. Which, if girls are given the tools, training and encouragement to succeed, is very much untrue.

Katherine Tucker

Biloxi