If you read my columns from time to time, you have observed one of the things I like about Colorado Politics is the range of issues, both geographical and metaphorical, that are covered. One of my very favorite sections is the Out West Roundup, wherein various stories from the western U.S. we all love are highlighted.

This week’s issue brings both good news and, well, bad news, depending on your political outlook. It’s worth a quick read, go ahead and check it out and I’ll wait here…

All set?

OK, let’s start with the story about the lynx habitat. It appears U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have put the final touches on a plan to create habitat protections for the Canadian Lynx population, largely in the southern Rocky Mountains, where habitats are most directly threatened by climate change. Officials appear to be hurrying as quickly as they can, based on the unstated but fairly clear view the new Trump administration will seek to not only halt protection efforts but to even roll back those already in place.

You might say what has the Canadian Lynx ever done for me? Well, they feast on rabbit populations that, without an apex predator, would quickly climb to dangerous levels. Rabbits don’t know the difference between wild plants to eat and a farmer’s field, so it is in our long-term self-interest to protect such predators. We’ll see what the new Trumpers do, but I’m not optimistic.

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I want to spend some time here on another issue raised in the Roundup, that of transgender access, an issue the Wyoming legislature is taking up. As part of their apparent overall effort to restrict trans folks from, well most everything, like existing, the GOPers in Cheyenne are going after what many see as the low-hanging fruit on this issue: participation in girls’ sports. To hear the GOPers tell it, vast hoards of six-foot-tall boys are claiming they are girls so they can dominate girls’ basketball. I overstate, but frankly, not by much.

And I admit this particular issue, sports participation, was something I struggled with, at least until I did some basic research. I can’t help but wonder, in my increasingly cynical view of people’s motivations, that having effectively lost the issue of gay rights in our society, those who wrap themselves in the flag and march about carrying Bibles have turned to trans rights as their next target. As it turns out, most folks don’t actually care about working with an LGBTQI person, so let’s go after the trans folks?

But won’t someone think of the children? (bonus points if you recognize the Simpson’s reference).

The first thing I’ve seen from the other side is to try declaring that, well, there really isn’t any such thing as trans, but rather these are people who have “chosen” to claim to be of the “opposite” sex shown on their birth documents. The Wyoming legislators noted above are trying to find ways to, as they hypocritically put it, bring “uniformity” to school athletics. GOP Rep. Martha Lawley’s bill would ban any state funds to any school that doesn’t ban trans folks from school athletics. But it goes even farther in that it would ban Wyoming sports teams from playing against any out-of-state teams that had a transgender athlete on the team.

These far-right folks seem to think being trans — as they argued unsuccessfully about gays a generation ago — is a choice. That somehow, a 12-year-old kid makes a conscience decision to “pretend” to be the opposite sex in hopes of achieving some advantage. In fact, of course, no one “chooses” to be trans. Being trans if a far more difficult life than being non-trans.

Yet the far-right persists in claiming these kids are just trying to game the system. Thank goodness, they may well think, for the Wyoming legislature’s proposed ban on these evil kids.

Which, quite naturally, made me wonder how big of an issue this actually is. We see lots of yelping but how many actual trans athletes are there? Well, let’s do the math.

The answer depends on whom you ask. One researcher in this area said there are certainly fewer than 100 such athletes nationwide, and a spokesperson for the ACLU, which is heavily involved in this issue, said they have located a grand total of five trans high school athletes in the U.S.

Five.

But that is not to say the issue is not unimportant, as it deals with one of my oft-used themes, rights in conflict. There have been other examples of this problem. Several years ago, when I was still officiating high school and junior high football and basketball, there was a case in Texas, regarding a seventh grader being allowed to play football. He was, very unfortunately for the young man, a 12-year-old who was six feet tall and weighed more than 300 pounds. Some parents on other teams objected, worried a football player more than three times the size of their own child represented an unreasonable and dangerous risk, and they wanted the heavy kid banned. As there was a 135-pound weight limit for seventh grade, the young man was banned from youth football.

So, were the parents of the other kid bigots and evil or are they just looking out for their child’s welfare? Reasonable questions. Are there reasonable answers?

As is so often the case over the last eight years or so I’ve been writing these columns, I don’t have a correct or final answer. But I can suggest that, based on the numbers alone, we have time to think rationally about this and to look for a solution that is, if not totally fair to everyone, at least the “least bad” solution.

But I’ll close with this: if you felt sympathies for the young Texas lad, please consider the same sympathies for the trans kid who is just trying to fit in, to his/her own skin, to school and to our society.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.