today’s ” AR-online” again AR-Online recent issues: November 1999 October 1999 September 1999 August 1999 July 1999 June 1999 May 1999 April 1999 March 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 September 1998 August 1998 July 1998 Alphabetical index (text) Toronto, Alarming by Vince J.
Higgins It is alarming to read that Keith Norton, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, thinks that likening individuals with gender dysphoria to “extreme depressives, the autistic, schizophrenics, and other mentally ill people,” is somehow pejorative. (Letter, Oct. 9.) His view that comparing someone to these categories of patients is “stigmatizing,” indicates his total lack of fitness for his position.
He suggests that surgical intervention in these cases is appropriate and it may well be. But, I thought we had at least a generation ago abandoned the idea that physical illnesses were somehow more real and acceptable than mental ones. Here we have a senior government official trying to turn the clock back and, at the same time, abandoning his obligations to those less well equipped mentally than others to cope with the world around them.
Perhaps one of the greatest human rights abuses today is that the people of Ontario are all forced to pay to keep holders of such views on the payroll. Vince J. Higgins, Bath, Ont. The above news item is reproduced without editing other than typographical Register your name and address to go on the Mailing List to receive 1999