Editor, Gazette-Journal:

With the Dec. 17 editorial “Blazing a trail,” the G-J editors have used an interesting phrase to describe the latest item to consume attention at Gloucester’s high school. The 15-year-old daughter of a local family has pressed her desire to use the boys’ restrooms and enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union to help her make the case by participating in a formal federal complaint against Gloucester’s schools and the taxpayers who pay the bills. The experience of having to use bathrooms appropriate to her sex as noted on her birth certificate is described in the ACLU’s press release as “stigmatizing and isolating,” differing somewhat from the 15-year-old’s own words quoted in press reports as “alienating and humiliating.” Ah, to be young again, with feet civilly planted firmly in mid-air.

Blazing a trail is an expression more often used to characterize an innovator’s risk and conjures u...