{"id":68476,"date":"2021-03-05T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-gender-bigotry-shouldnt-hide-behind-the-mask-of-religious-freedom\/"},"modified":"2021-03-06T10:39:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T19:39:31","slug":"opinion-gender-bigotry-shouldnt-hide-behind-the-mask-of-religious-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-gender-bigotry-shouldnt-hide-behind-the-mask-of-religious-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Gender bigotry shouldn&#8217;t hide behind the mask of &#8216;religious freedom&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I would like to respond to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/opinion-laws-like-the-equality-act-shouldnt-hide-behind-masks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kristen Waggoner of Alliance for Defending Freedom<\/a> with the comment that gender bigotry shouldn&rsquo;t hide behind the mask of &ldquo;religious freedom&rdquo;. Treating all people equally, including those who do not identify with the gender they were born with, is not infringing on Waggoner&rsquo;s right to believe in or worship any god she chooses. Science disagrees with Waggoner&rsquo;s belief that there are only two genders and that they are immediately identifiable at birth, and although her right to believe otherwise is intact, it does not include her right to dictate those beliefs to anyone else, including the U.S. justice system. As the saying goes, &ldquo;Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It&rsquo;s not pie.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><em>Tracy Ward,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Juneau<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; <\/em><ins><em>Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/have-something-to-say\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Here&rsquo;s how to submit a My Turn or letter.<\/a><\/em> <\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&ldquo;Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It&rsquo;s not pie.&rdquo; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":68477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-68476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68476"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=68476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}