To the editor:

Recently I got my second COVID vaccination. Several days before my appointment I received an email from the New Ulm Covid Vaccine Hub of Allina Health, asking me to update my health information. After putting in my name and sex (male or female), I was shocked to find this statement: “We want to recognize you for who you are — examples: Non-Binary, Transgender Female (MTF), Transgender Male (FTM). My gender is …”

Needless to say I stopped answering questions. As Genesis 5:2 says, “He (God) created them male and female and blessed them.” God does not create transgenders, lesbians, gays, homosexuals (LGBTQXYZ…). In today’s society, gender is the idea that our identity is determined by feelings without any reference to the body. Gender identity is a self-chosen state of mind that is unrelated to the body. Transgender is a term that refers to people who identify as another gender. People who identify as transgender are born with normal male or female chromosomes. Transgender status has no basis in observable medical or scientific fact, but is grounded entirely on self-declaration and feelings.

I am looking for a petition from the 15 physicians at New Ulm Medical Center, and its president, to ask Allina Health to stop fostering and condoning this deviant lifestyle and remove the gender identity question. Doctors know what the real science is concerning sex. Did you know that President Biden’s deceptively named “Equality Act” wants to erase the concept of male and female from our society? Neither word appears in the 31 pages of the bill.

It behooves our local school board, superintendent, and principals, who carry extra clout, to contact our state legislatures and insist that transgender males not be allowed to participate on female athletic teams or enter female locker rooms. This would kill girls’ sports and take away female’s privacy. Push such legislations beforehand instead of using the excuse that we are only following the states guidelines. Some schools are already indoctrinating children as young as kindergarten with gender identity questions. Conditioning children into believing they are the opposite sex is child abuse. Parents of our public schools, watch carefully what is being taught in our local schools.

In conclusion, everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender is an idea of the mind and not an objective biological one. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery. We need to do all we can to preserve the nuclear family.

Parents and others, for more details and to get a Parent Resource Guide on the transgender trend, go to www.mfc.org.

Myron Fluegge

New Ulm