Letters on transgender bathrooms, animal rights, worst president, Memorial Day service

Bathroom use is not the only issue

Where have the opponents to transgender persons using the “other sex’s” bathroom been all these years? I have often wondered what sort of trauma and psychological damage is done to the child who is taken into a restroom with the opposite-sex parent.

Seriously, is this all we Kansans have to worry about with the way our state is going downhill?

Protect all animals?

To those people who feel that killing Harambe the gorilla or Cecil the lion is tantamount to murder, I offer this challenge. Walk through the parking lot to your car and count the dead bugs splattered on its windshield. Now call local law enforcement and turn yourself in. If you have a lawyer, inform him that you’ll be charged as a serial killer with multiple victims. Sell all of your possessions to pay your legal fees, and prepare yourself for lethal injection.

Animals needn’t be furry, or cute, or even endangered to deserve the type of protection you deem appropriate.

Bush was worst

How incredibly condescending and insulting to have yet another low-information conservative/Republican decide who is and who isn’t a “true” American (“Worst president,” May 28 Letters to the Editor). With an approval rating of more than 50 percent and going up, President Obama is representing the views of a majority of Americans.

It was not the president who screamed “You lie!” to Republicans during a joint session of Congress. It is Republicans who refuse to treat the president with a modicum of common courtesy, decency and respect. It is not Obama e-mailing and sharing racist cartoons and “jokes” depicting Republicans as monkeys.

Also, don’t complain about Obama and his golfing. He took 189 days of vacation through the end of last year. George W. Bush took an astounding 879 vacation days in his two terms.

Obama took over an economy that was driven into the ground and has added more than 12 million private-sector jobs while lowering the deficit. Bush blew off Osama bin Laden, saying he was not that interested in him. Obama got bin Laden.

If you want to see the true worst president in our history, one has to simply look back eight short years ago to the president for whom the letter writer surely voted twice.

Moving service

Thanks to all involved in the Memorial Day service at Greenwood Cemetery. The service was moving and uplifting.

Thanks to the staff, management and board of directors at the cemetery for supporting this vital tradition, along with all the volunteers who set up and took down the chairs and fixtures.

Thanks to pastor Byron Barrientez for a lovely and dignified tribute. Thanks also to vocalist Carol McDonald and keyboardist Brad Reed.

And a special note of gratitude to the service personnel who participated – the American Legion Riders, VFW Post 6957 Ritual Team, and the Tornado Alley Young Marines for the stirring fallen soldier tribute and the folding of the U.S. flag. They were deeply moving.

Thanks to all for upholding this dignified tradition.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 12:04 AM with the headline "Letters on transgender bathrooms, animal rights, worst president, Memorial Day service."