Regarding Lee Elci’s column, “Maybe I’m too old for a politically correct, non-binary world,” (Feb. 5), we’ve had photos on our licenses for decades, which quickly allows a police officer or anyone else to verify that it belongs to the person presenting it. So one might reasonably ask why the DMV needs to ask my gender or anything else other than my name, address, and whether I have medical conditions, or if am an organ donor?

But rather than ask these obvious questions, the writer takes the opportunity to mock people who do not identify as either male or female and tries to negate their existence. I know a few of these people, as well as transgendered people (which I doubt the author does, or he wouldn’t have written such a mean-spirited thing). They have a pretty rough row to hoe in life. He should try talking to some people who identify as non-binary. If he did, he might think twice about talking about them so dismissively and disdainfully.

He should be ashamed, and the commenters jeering him on should be ashamed. But mostly, the editors of The Day should be ashamed to have disseminated such a juvenile essay in what has, in the past, been a bedrock of the community.

Peter O’Connor

Mystic