By TERRY GOLDMAN
Los Alamos

I applaud Gary Stradling’s LTE, but he still hasn’t quite gotten to the full magnitude and complexity of God’s creation. Vis.: “The 0.018% with sex chromosome abnormalities face medical challenges, not new genders, and deserve compassionate treatment.”

The lack of faith, shows up in the term “abnormalities”. If you are any kind of monotheist, you believe that there is only one G-d and that G-d made the entire world (which we now understand to be a Universe) and everything in it. And the best evidence we have is that G-d (deliberately?!) made life enormously complex, malleable and adaptive. So chromosomal variations from the most prevalent, whether irrelevantly minor or significantly affective must all be part of G-d’s plan. And not even chromosomal variations explain all of the developmental variations that can occur! The discovery of epigenetics affecting how and which chromosomes are expressed lets us see even more of the magnificent complexity at work.

Some of these variations cause severe problems for the living creatures involved; we are enjoined by faith to accept and assist as much as we know how. Rejecting those with skeletal structures that inhibit being included in human society … or just variations in appearance, proclivities of all kinds … all must be viewed as part of G-d’s design. Of course, you don’t have to like it or agree to accept it. But then please acknowledge the limits of your faith. And recognize that ‘new’ (to us) genders may be a part of the (very) long-term design plan.