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.