Letters to the editor

Common sense is not a common commodity

Like it or not, we’re in a culture war.

Iowa’s Republican Legislators are working to pass common sense bills that protect our children from life-altering experimental drugs and surgeries that change their gender, until they are old enough to understand the consequences.

They require students to use the bathroom and compete in sports that aligns with their birth sex and have removed obscene and porn type books from school libraries.

Seems like common sense but not everyone agrees.

Liberals claim book banning, censorship and children should be able to choose their own gender.

Surely when a child is old enough to choose their gender, they should be able to choose their own teacher(s) and parent(s).

A Vermont Christian School girls basketball team in forfeited a tournament game because the opposing team had a biological male player who claims he’s a girl.

Their decision was based on fairness, safety and a bad precedent for women’s sports.

The Vermont Principles Association said the Christian School violated policies and is barred from all future state tournaments in all sports.

Don’t worry, you can depend on the liberal media to not bother you with what you don’t need to know.

Leland Graber

Wayland

Democracy is in danger

The US Constitution guarantees to each state a republican form of government – that does not mean Republicans running the government with insular oppression.

This governor has successfully pushed limits on local government powers, taken away local decisions regarding residential construction, minimum wages, use of fireworks, presence of weapons, traffic control, school discipline, school funding, school curriculum, size of local police force, attempts to stop housing discrimination, voting, protection of animals from abuse, protecting children from unsafe labor, and the list goes on and on. Her budgeting mistakes last session have put an extra burden on local governments who were told it was their problem to solve, not the State’s.

Furthermore, Senate District 46 and House District 92 offers two legislators who make no attempts to communicate, represent, meet with us, nor hear us. My numerous attempts to contact Senator Driscoll have been met with no effort to respond to my questions, or to acknowledge that my opinion matters. She does not take phone calls or read her emails.

In the House, our democracy is not working any better. Representative Hora has also failed to respond to questions, with one exception, when I asked what qualified her to be on the Education Committee, she responded that she was a “caring parent.” A caring parent is a quality, not a qualification that empowers one to decide how others believe, think, and manage their own bodies.

Democracy was created by our Founding Fathers to stop despots who rule with dangerous, narrow-minded tenets. We can do better than this Iowa, we must do better than this!

Jeanine Redlinger

Lone Tree