Tag Archive for: title ix

‘Just a Disaster’: Biden’s Title IX Rule Empowers LGBTQ Movement, Erases Women and Justice

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

The Biden administration’s revision of a civil rights statute designed to protect women’s rights in education erases women’s protections, rewrites landmark civil rights legislation to advance the LGBT agenda by federal fiat, and waters down legal standards for those falsely accused of sexual harassment.

The Biden administration obliterates the unique rights intended for women and girls by claiming Title IX’s prohibitions of discrimination against females in education apply to men who identify as women — regardless of their outward appearance — as well as those who identify as homosexual. Its “unofficial final rule,” released on April 19, now claims LGBTQIA+ activists may cite protections intended for women to accuse their fellow students of discrimination based on “sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The term “gender identity” appears 289 times in the 1,577-page document.

The new rule also requires that these “discrimination” allegations only meet the lowest standard of proof, known as the “preponderance of the evidence.” The rule — announced by Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights — also establishes “equitable grievance procedures.”

“They have completely demolished protections for women,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told “Washington Watch” guest host Joseph Backholm last week. “It’s just a disaster.” The new proposed rule “impacts speech. It impacts a free and appropriate education.”

In a comment emailed to The Washington Stand, Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau called the new rule “a slap in the face to women and girls who have fought long and hard for equal opportunities.” The Biden administration’s “radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women” and “will have devastating consequences on the future of women’s sports, student privacy, and parental rights.”

The Biden administration’s federal fiat — never approved by legislation — rolls back regulations instituted in May 2020 by then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that reestablished legal norms and standards for those accused of sexual harassment.

Obama administration rules — also drawn up by Lhamon, a former ACLU attorney — allowed college sexual harassment investigations to be carried out by a single investigator, who acted as judge and jury. Vague definitions proscribing any “unwelcome conduct,” whether verbal or “nonverbal,” led school districts to punish students for unwelcome staring.

Under the Trump administration’s revised Title IX rules, anyone accused of sexual harassment on campus enjoyed the presumption of innocence, as in any other legal proceeding. The defendant also had the right to know the charges against him or her, examine all the evidence presented in the proceedings, have an adviser cross-examine any witness’s testimony, and appeal the ruling. The administration had to meet the more robust and normative legal standard of “clear and convincing evidence.”

At the time, Lhamon asserted that the Trump administration’s revised guidelines would make it “permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity.” No epidemic of unpunished campus rape followed.

The Biden administration’s new Title IX rule eliminates all these elements, which are standard in other consequential accusations.

“The final regulations restore and strengthen vital protections for students,” Biden’s Department of Education contended in a press release Friday.

All parties seem to acknowledge these rules will supercharge the number of sexual harassment cases on campus after it takes effect on August 1. “This rule is designed to encourage reporting,” a Biden administration official told journalists on a call Thursday.

Newly empowered with looser regulations, activist bureaucrats in the federal government, and on college campuses nationwide, “are going to enforce this rule, and they are going to enforce it aggressively,” predicted Kilgannon. “The Education Department laid down their marker and said, ‘Yes, indeed, you will face a penalty for this.’” States that refuse to implement the strategy will “be losing federal funds for your education programs in your state.”

Since more affluent areas, like the D.C. suburbs, rely more on property taxes to fund their schools, the threat of losing federal education dollars falls heaviest on the most vulnerable students living in underprivileged districts. “It is the poorest places who will be most harmed by this, because they rely the most on federal funding,” Kilgannon added.

To avoid running afoul of an activist bureaucracy’s interpretation of the newly broadened rule, education officials may shut down any speech that could turn into litigation, and threaten federal funding.

“This change reverses decades of progress toward equality, open discourse, due process, and parental rights,” observed the Southeastern Legal Foundation. The new rule will cause students to “self-censor rather than risk being reported for harassment” and “significantly undermines the role of parents — who should be the primary caregivers for their children and who are entitled to raise their children to share certain values and beliefs — by requiring conformity to the federal government’s views on biology and so-called gender identity.”

The regulations drew fire from Congress over these specific concerns. “Evidently, the acceptance of biological reality, and the faithful implementation of the law, are just pills too big for the Department to swallow,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

The new regulation pulls off a trifecta of administrative harm, as it “attacks the definition of sex, due-process rights, and free-speech rights,” said Inez Feltscher Stepman, a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum.

The regulation also continues the decades-long trend of rewriting legislation through executive action. “Title IX was written in 1972 when ‘sex’ meant male and female, and no amount of interpretive jiujitsu permits a cabinet agency to rewrite the plain language of the law. Efforts to do so have failed repeatedly in Congress for one simple reason: Such an expansion of law is deeply unpopular, with opposition to these changes spanning both political and racial lines,” said Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, in a comment to TWS. Numerous polls have shown a supermajority of Americans oppose the extending of women’s rights to men, regardless of their self-identity.

“It is grotesque that the White House has chosen to capitulate to extremists in his party, sacrificing the First Amendment” in the process, Neily told TWS.

Women’s rights activists promise not to take the loss of their distinct place in the law lying down. “This is going to be the subject of lawsuits,” Kilgannon told Backholm, citing direct knowledge of multiple civil rights attorneys and organizations. Neiley told TWS explicitly, “This betrayal of students will not soon be forgotten by American parents, and we look forward to suing the administration over this policy soon.” Likewise, Rouleau told TWS that the “Alliance Defending Freedom plans to take action to defend female athletes, as well as school districts, teachers, and students who will be gravely harmed by this unlawful government overreach.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Wants To Send American Tax Dollars To Train Army Of Transgender Activists In India

RELATED VIDEO: James Lindsay SHATTERS Woke Ideology: EU Parliament Speech

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trans-Identifying Female Boxer KO’d in 21 Seconds by Biological Male

/in , , , , , , , , /by

April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes, and there’s seemingly a shower of men dominating in women’s sports that has yet to cease. What has bloomed as a result? Social outrage.

Two recent events are surfacing in news outlets, in which many have argued serve as further examples of why men should not be competing in women’s sports (and vice versa). On Saturday, trans-identifying runner Aayden Gallagher nearly blew his female competitors out of the water during the 2024 Sherwood Need For Speed Classic track competition in Oregon. The biological male finished the 200-meter race in a time of 25.49 – roughly two seconds ahead of the other runners — a sizeable margin in the realm of track and field.

In a different heat, Gallagher barely came in second behind female runner Aster Jones. But despite losing his hold on first place, it’s notable that Gallagher hit the “fifth fastest time ever run in the state’s girls 200m,” and the “fourth fastest time ever run in the Oregon girls’ 400m,” The Post Millennial reported. But to make an accurate comparison against male-born athletes, PM continued, “Gallegher’s 200m time would have earned 61st place among the male athletes and 46th in the 400m.”

The online rage sparked by these circumstances were partly due to Gallagher specifically, but also by the bigger picture of men being able to compete in women’s sports in the first place. As the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) shared on X, “Championing boys in girls’ sports is blatant misogyny.” Libs of TikTok, a prominent conservative social media presence, also posted on X, “These high school girls just had their dream stolen from them because the school is catering the delusions of a boy who pretends to be a girl.” Gallagher “is a cheater,” the post stated.

One X user responded to that post, “This man is not just a cheater, he’s a criminal. He’s stolen from girls their opportunity for fair competition and to have a bright future in sports.” Another wrote, “One day, future generations will look back on this with pain, wondering how humanity ever got to this point. Such a sad situation.” And amid several other angry comments, one sobering comment read, “When will parents of girls get sick of their daughters taking second place?”

On the flip side of this social controversy is boxer Patricio Manuel, formerly known as Patricia. The biological female recently became the first trans-identifying pro boxer to compete in the men’s division. Before her transition in 2013, Manuel competed in the U.S. women’s Olympic Trial, but had to take a step back due to a shoulder injury. According to The Daily Mail, “Manuel was a five-time national amateur women’s boxing champion.” But eleven years later, she started boxing with the big boys. Literally.

While the female boxer had recorded three consecutive wins, the fight during the Golden Boy Fight Night in California on April 4 put an end to the streak. Manuel went up against her male opponent, Joshua Brian Reyes, and was knocked out within 21 seconds. Media Research Center (MRC) posed the question, “Ever wonder why you never hear stories about women who believe they’re men stealing actual men’s sports trophies and championships?” To which they concluded, “That’s because it doesn’t happen.” And as many have argued, this topic shouldn’t be up to debate.

Macy Petty, an NCAA volleyball player and former Family Research Council intern, warned, “[The Biden] administration continues to reduce sex-based competition to arbitrary hormone levels,” she shared with The Washington Stand. But “women are so much more than a hormone level, and our sports should reflect our unique design.”

According to Petty, “The female league is not a B league, or simply a league for athletes with particular hormone levels. It is a league specifically created for women to embrace the potentials of their God-created design.” She continued, “Male intrusion not only disrupts the protection of female opportunity but attacks the very design of male and female.” And it appears it’s not just men in women’s sports that causes controversy, as Manuel’s case demonstrates.

Petty concluded, “Male athletes beating women by seconds in track competition is a true mockery of the intentionality distinguishing the sexes. [And] in many cases, such as boxing, it places women directly in harm’s way.” But many have joined Petty in the pleas of keeping men and women’s sports distinct, including “over a dozen female athletes [who] are suing the National Collegiate Athletics Association for letting transgender athletes compete against them and use female locker rooms in college sports.”

The question is: will high school athletes and their parents follow suit?

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Dem Claims Men ‘Don’t Compete in Women’s Sports’ as Stolen Titles Near 300

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Does Rep. Jerry Nadler (D) live in New York or an alternate universe? People certainly wondered after a House Judiciary hearing where the 76-year-old declared, “Men do not compete in women’s sports.” Is the president’s senility contagious or is Nadler living in complete denial of a global phenomenon that’s plunged communities into chaos? Not only are men competing in women’s sports, they’re winning women’s titles — a fact Riley Gaines was more than happy to point out.

“Ironic he says this on the EXACT 2 year anniversary of this photo being taken,” the former University of Kentucky swimmer posted alongside a picture of Lia Thomas holding a trophy he never should have had the chance to race for. “This 6’4” man isn’t fooling anyone with any amount of common sense,” Gaines fumed. “2 years ago today I had a fire lit under me and communists like Nadler continue to fuel it.”

And yet, Nadler was so determined to suppress reality that he actually moved to have evidence of the debate stricken from the record. Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman (Wyo.) had catalogued a number of times that biological boys had stolen girls’ titles and opportunities in the last several years. The group SheWon puts the number at an eye-popping 292 stolen first-place podiums. “I ask for unanimous consent to submit for the record instances of men hijacking women’s sports and the various examples that we have demonstrating not only injuries that have been suffered by women as men have participated in girls’ sports, but also the women — the girls and women who have been affected by this, including Riley Gaines, when Will Thomas decided to join the … women’s swimming team in Pennsylvania,” she requested.

Nadler, the committee’s ranking member, fired back, “I object to concluding these mistruths in the record.” Shocked, Hageman replied how telling it was that he didn’t want the facts included in the record — to which the New Yorker replied, “Men do not compete in women’s sports.”

That’s news to the 25 (going on 26) states who’ve stepped in to stop this madness from overtaking their girls at the pool, track, court, field, and gym. If it wasn’t happening, then this was sure a monumental waste of legislative time.

Slack-jawed, conservatives kept up the pressure, giving a passionate defense of girls and the opportunities, safety, and privacy they’re losing by this absurd introduction of men in women’s sports. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) showed a video montage of girls who’ve been physically injured playing against biological boys in volleyball, field hockey, and basketball. From Massachusetts to North Carolina, members watched as girls screamed in pain, lost teeth, were carted off with head injuries. One of the victims, Payton McNabb, still suffers from blurred vision, partial paralysis, and memory loss.

We have examples, Spartz insisted, of “much stronger guys playing sports against biologically not-as-strong women.” “Girls actually get hurt by biological males playing sports,” she argued. “I mean, it is really unbelievable for me that this is an issue that we cannot stand with women and girls on.” Instead, Spartz went on, “the other side tries to really deter the conversation in a different direction and divert it. … Let’s talk about how we are going to protect our women and girls.”

When the talk turned to privacy rights, Democrat Eric Swalwell (Calif.) joined Nadler’s delusion, claiming that men in girls locker rooms “is not a thing.”

Tell that to the 16 plaintiffs suing the NCAA. One of them, Gaines’s teammate and SEC champion Kaitlynn Wheeler, describes in agonizing detail how they were put in a “fundamentally unfair situation that no student-athlete, let alone a teenage girl, should ever have to face.” The collegiate sports body “did not simply make my teammates in the 100-, 200-, and 500-yard freestyle races face a biological male swimmer in the pool,” she insisted. “The NCAA also decided that Lia Thomas, a 6-foot-4-inch, 22-year-old transgender swimmer with a male body and full male genitalia, would be undressing with us.” She writes of that traumatizing experience in a new Washington Examiner op-ed:

“The moment I realized Thomas would be sharing our most private space, I was engulfed by a whirlwind of emotions — shock, disbelief, horror. The sanctity of our locker room, a space that should have been ours and ours alone, was shattered without warning. The presence of male genitalia in a space that was supposed to be safe, where we were vulnerable and exposed, was not just uncomfortable; it was a visceral invasion of our privacy and dignity.

“Feeling my stomach churn as whispers turned to silence, I stood there, naked and exposed, not just physically but also emotionally, grappling with a reality I couldn’t comprehend. The NCAA’s decision to transform our sanctuary into a ‘unisex’ locker room without our consent felt like a betrayal of the highest order. It was a stark reminder that our voices, our comfort, and our boundaries did not matter.”

And yet, the effort to protect these girls is what Swalwell called “creepy” — not forcing innocent teenagers to share a room with a naked man. That’s what really stings, the girls say. No one has their backs. As so many female athletes admitted to Senate Republicans, they feel “helpless.” “This is kind of a theme that we got,” Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said of his committee’s investigation on trans inclusion in sports: “‘Why am I even trying? I don’t have any hope whatsoever.’” “Our voices as women were completely silenced,” another admitted.

Fortunately for Wheeler and the thousands of American daughters living this nightmare, Republicans do care. Over the objections of Democrats, conservatives on the House Judiciary Committee passed Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-Fla.) Protection of Women in Olympic & Amateur Sports Act last Thursday. To Wheeler, who watched Thomas stand on top of a podium meant for her sport, maybe it will mean the end of the silence of the adults in the room. “That silence spoke volumes of the injustice, pain, and anger brewing in the hearts of not just the competitors but of every woman forced into silence by a system that refuses to listen.”

Until then, she vowed, women will “stand against the erasure of our voices,” whether or not this president or his party stands with them. “We demand a future where female athletes are respected, where our safety and privacy are not just acknowledged but fiercely protected.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Does Transgender Visibility Day Override Resurrection Sunday?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Led by Riley Gaines, 16 Women File Groundbreaking Suit against the NCAA

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

The NCAA has ignored Congress, its own committee members, state legislators, parents, and female athletes, but it can’t ignore this. In what is being called “a day of reckoning” for President Charlie Baker, the country’s biggest collegiate sports association is being taken to court over a radical transgender policy that has physically hurt, traumatized, and robbed young athletes of opportunities across America. “This is the time to speak up for all the women in the future,” swimmer Reka Gyorgy insisted. “It’s been two years, and nothing [has] happened. When will we change things if it’s not now?”

Those two years Gyorgy mentions are personal. It was 2022 when she lost her All-American title to Lia Thomas, something she’d worked for five years to achieve. Because Thomas decided to swim as a female, Reka was bumped to 17th — one spot shy of the top-16 cutoff she needed. She thought back on that devastation in an exclusive interview with The Free Press’s Francesca Block. “I was in the best physical [shape] I have ever been,” she explained. “And [this was my] the last chance. I was a senior, I was ready for racing. I was ready [to] give it all.” And yet, “going into the race [where] you know that one spot is going to be taken for sure [by Thomas], that’s a totally different mindset.”

“[W]atching that last heat of the 500 freestyle, it was just so emotional,” Gyorgy remembers. “Looking at the screen after the last heat touched the wall [and] seeing my name at 17th, I was shocked, to be honest. I went through all the feelings. … I was surrounded by my teammates and my coaches, and I started crying. I broke down because I felt right away that I [wouldn’t] have the second chance to swim again. And it just wasn’t fair. It was so unfair.”

While Riley Gaines grabbed most of the headlines after tying with Thomas for the trophy, it was Gyorgy who sent the first public letter of complaint to the NCAA. After the 2022 tournament, “[Reka] was really the first athlete at that national championships to take a stand,” Gaines said. “Had she not done that and had I not seen that, I certainly would not have taken the stand that I did. So I could not be more grateful for Rica. And she certainly inspired and continues to inspire more people than I think even she could possibly realize.”

Now the two women are linking arms, along with college athletes across swimming, volleyball, track, and diving, who’ve all been victims of the NCAA’s indifference toward Title IX and the devastation their rules have done to fair play. The lawsuit, which was organized by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, is considered the first of its kind — and, if you ask most Americans, long overdue. Among other things, it demands the association “revoke all awards given to trans athletes in women’s competition and ‘reassign’ them to their female contenders. It also asks for ‘damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety…” The Free Press explains.

Some of the most horrifying stories of Thomas’s involvement in girls’ swimming have come at the expense of girls’ privacy — another reason the women felt compelled to sue. As Gaines has shared before, most of the competitors at the NCAA Championships in Georgia had zero warning that a naked Thomas would be in the women’s locker room. “The first time we found out that this would be the case was when we were actually undressing next to this six-foot-four man who was also simultaneously undressing, fully exposing himself and his male genitalia,” Gaines said. “We were not given any prior acknowledgement. We were not given a way to make other arrangements for ourselves. This was something as women, as female athletes, that we felt uncomfortable with.”

One elite swimmer and fellow plaintiff, Kylee Alons, a 31-time All-American, was so embarrassed that she changed in a utility room after she encountered Thomas. “I was literally racing U.S. and Olympic gold medalists, and I was changing in a storage closet at this elite-level meet,” she told Block.

“… I can’t even put into words the feelings,” Gaines shared. “I mean, of course it’s awkward, it’s embarrassing, it’s uncomfortable, but really the feelings of betrayal and utter violation. And honestly, the locker room aspect of this whole thing was traumatizing. And it wasn’t even necessarily traumatizing because of what we were forced to see or how we as women were forcibly exploited without our consent. It was traumatic for me to know just how easy it was for those people who created and enforce these policies [to] totally dismiss our rights to privacy without even a second thought, without even bare minimum forewarning us.”

One thing people might not realize, Block explained after reading the lawsuit, is that a competitive swimming race suit “is much different.” “It’s really tight. It could take 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes 30, 40 minutes to put on.” So these young women aren’t talking about a few minutes of discomfort. “And let’s be honest here,” Gaines admitted, “a swimming locker room [is] not a place of modesty. I think we can all agree a locker room is not a comfortable place in general. But growing up a swimmer, I think, at least for speaking for myself, you grow to feel comfortable being vulnerable in that environment. But that vulnerability was entirely stripped from us. When you have your back turned, you’re undressing, and all of a sudden you hear a man’s voice in that changing space. … It was innate for every girl in that locker room to cover themselves, whether that was with their hands or their towels or their clothes — and to get out of that locker room as quickly as they could.”

Reka reminded people that this was a position the NCAA forced them into. “As Riley said, we didn’t get a heads up. … And it might seem silly for some people, but we had 18- to 22-year-old girls in the locker room — and some of them may not have seen a naked male before. And [it’s] just not right.”

At the end of the day, the women say, they’re all victims of the radical agenda of the Biden administration, the NCAA, and International Olympic Committee (IOC), whose main goal seems to be “actively and openly discriminating against women on the basis of our sex, which is everything that Title IX was passed to prevent from happening.”

And in a stunning admission by Baker to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the NCAA pursued this extreme trans policy without ever studying the “physical, psychological, or emotional harm” of the trans policy on female athletes. “That’s a bombshell,” Concerned Women for America’s Doreen Denny insisted after discovering it — buried — on page 18 of the president’s written response. That alone should be “grounds for the NCAA to cease and desist” from its policy immediately.

And it’s not as if the NCAA hadn’t been pressed to study the issue. Members of its own committees, including Bill Bock, who were experts on the science, urged the association to act. Bock’s years with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency led him to believe that allowing men to compete against women was essentially “massive, authorized cheating.” And yet, as he explained after resigning in protest, “There was no real mechanism for me to bring that issue to anybody within my committee and force a decision on it or something like that. … The board of directors of the NCAA is the ultimate decision maker. And they were the ones that ultimately made the decision to continue to allow Thomas to compete.”

When people asked about protecting a level playing field, the NCAA “tried to avoid the question,” Bock said. “Mostly, they [tried] to talk about something else … [like] inclusiveness and the need to be open to whatever somebody feels about themselves. … And then they say, ‘This could cause people to self-harm if we don’t allow them to do this.’ And so, we should make sport unfair because people will self-harm.”

But the biological realities are real, most international sports bodies have conceded as they snap back to stricter, girls-only rules. “Women are not just a testosterone threshold,” Gaines argued. “That is not the qualification to being a woman. Even if Thomas had zero nanomoles per liter of testosterone in his body, there are still advantages that males possess over women that make this unfair. The bottom line is, even if this wasn’t a physical sport, it’s a woman’s category, and by allowing men into women’s category, you are, again, objectively discriminating against women on the basis of our sex.”

To the haters who say she’s just anti-trans, Gaines fires back, “My stance is not anti-anything. My stance is pro-reality. It is pro-fairness. It is pro-common sense. It is pro-woman. And if being pro-woman is deemed anti-trans, then it must mean that being pro-trans is deemed anti-woman. And what do we call someone who’s anti-woman? We call them a misogynist.”

At the end of the day, she argued, “Reka and myself and the other athletes who are signed onto this lawsuit, we are standing for something. We are standing for women again. We are standing for women’s sports. We are standing for reality. We are not standing against anything. There’s certainly a place for people who identify as trans to compete in sports. Of course there is. And I encourage everyone, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation or race … to play sports, but play in a category that is fair and that is safe. Thomas competing against us was neither of those things.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Female University Athletes File Lawsuit Against NCAA Over Transgender Policy

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

After Male Basketball Player Injures 3 Female Players, Team Forfeits Game

/in , , , , , , , /by

J.K. Rowling, the famous author of the “Harry Potter” series, has received vehement backlash from LGBT activists over her belief that men who identify as women should not be held in women’s prisons. “If you support putting violent and sexually predatory men into women’s prisons, you are knowingly forcing those women to live in fear of, and, in some proven cases, to suffer abuse that many of them will have endured pre-incarceration,” she wrote on X Tuesday.

She concluded, “Women have the basic human right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment.” And while Rowling’s grievances centered on trans-identifying men in women’s prisons, her sentiments reflect what many fear within the realm of women’s sports, namely, girls getting hurt by physically stronger boys.

Since the presence of trans-identifying men in women’s competitions have increased, the number of women winning first, second, and third has decreased. The women and girls in swimming, track and field, golf, volleyball, dance, cross country, and other sports, are repeatedly defeated by men. For some, this alone is enough to demand a change. But when women losing to men isn’t enough to spark change, many are asking if women being hurt by men, which has happened repeatedly over the last few years, will prove to be the final straw.

Footage from a girls’ high school basketball game earlier this month is raising a lot of questions about the safety of trans participation. In a viral video from a game between Massachusetts Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy, a large, male figure (who reportedly is six feet tall and has facial hair) from the KIPP team throwing a female player from the charter team to the ground as he seized the ball from her — a move that resulted in the girl gripping her back in pain. But this wasn’t the only incident.

A total of three injuries resulted from the play of this trans-identifying athlete, all of which happened before halftime, and with only five players able to play, KIPP chose to forfeit because they couldn’t afford to have any more girls get hurt.

Allegedly, the male athlete was competing among girls to reflect “the school’s commitment to ‘inclusivity and safety.’” Riley Gaines, a former NCAA All-American swimmer, posted on X, “A man hitting a woman used to be called domestic abuse. Now it’s called brave.” She added, “Who watches this [and] actually thinks this is ‘compassionate, kind, and inclusive?’”

Mary Szoch, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, expressed her concern to The Washington Stand. “As a former Division I basketball player at one of the top women’s basketball programs in the country, at practice, I competed against men every day.” She said this was common for Division I women’s basketball teams, because it gave the women a chance to practice against men who were “stronger, faster, and quicker.”

However, Szoch emphasized that the male players were instructed “to be humble enough to know they are there to help the women’s team become better — not to use their physical advantages to humiliate or hurt a player.” Szoch added that men, on average, are stronger and better at sports when competing against women, and “when we don’t recognize this, women get hurt. … [A]nd deep down, everyone knows this.” But it’s a truth that “people don’t want to acknowledge … because they are afraid of being called a bigot.”

FRC’s Meg Kilgannon also commented to TWS, “It seems abusive to make the girls endure this situation.” However, she added that “seeing girls on the opposing team physically injured by ‘inclusive’ athletic participation policies is only half of the story.”

“We have to also consider the girls on the team with the male player, who have to share a locker room with him, change clothes in front of him, and pretend that he is ‘just one of the girls,’” she pointed out. “I can’t say which situation is more abusive, but both are intolerable.” For Kilgannon, it seems evident that “Massachusetts public schools, charter or not, don’t protect the educational interests or rights of women and girls, but rather advance the interests of men and men who identify as women.”

Kilgannon insisted, “This story is all the more enraging because we knew it would happen, we tried to prevent it, and now girls are getting hurt.”

Szoch added that, ultimately, “telling a biological male that he is a female and allowing him to play women’s sports doesn’t help anyone — least of all the man.” She concluded, “As a former athlete who now has a daughter, I am hopeful that the presence of men playing women’s basketball will be a wake-up call for our country. Women deserve a chance to compete on a fair and safe playing field.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Anti-White Gemini | TONIGHT on TIPPING POINT

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Riley Gaines Demolishes Dems’ Trans Defense in the Senate’s ‘Protect Pride’ Hearing

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was chased, threatened, and held hostage in a room for three hours while a mob of leftist students raged outside, but it’s trans-identifying “children” who are “in danger,” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told her. That was just one of the staggering statements made by Democrats in a Wednesday hearing full of phony victimhood. And judging by the Left’s desperation, they won’t be the last.

While Americans continue to put the hurt on pro-trans companies, Joe Biden’s party is right to worry that the script may have permanently flipped. In a nod to the defense the Left is now playing, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” to sound the alarm on the shifting opinions of the country.

Some of the most dramatic moments centered around girls’ sports, where the Republicans’ witness, Gaines, expertly gutted the Left’s arguments. In an exchange with Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), she recounted the nightmare at San Francisco University earlier this year where students surrounded her and demanded a ransom “if I ever wanted to make it home to see my family again.” “I’m totally fine with people protesting,” she explained. “It’s their right to protest. But what I’m not fine with is when it does turn violent in the way that it did, because protesters afterwards, they rushed into the room, they turned off the lights, they rushed to the front. [We] were assaulted.”

Hawley acknowledged that the former NCAA All-American has been the target of “unbelievable amounts of abuse … intimidation, threats of violence.” He asked her to explain why. She said she believes it’s because she’s refused to take the erasure of women and girls lying down. “If we do speak up… they will call you everything under the sun — whether it’s transphobic, homophobic, racist, white supremacist, domestic terrorists. They will throw them all at you in hopes to deter you and hopes to silence you.”

For Gaines, who competed against male swimmer Lia Thomas, there was no other option. Apart from the injustice of competing — and losing — to a biological male, the things she and others were forced to endure in the locker room were demeaning and cruel.

“You were talking about just the incredible surprise, shall I say to put it gently, of finding a biological man, a 6-foot-4 biological man, in your locker room and having to accept that without being asked about it, without being told about it even,” Hawley said. “What was that like for you?”

Gaines explained that the girls “only became aware we would be undressing next to a man when we had to see a man undressing while we were simultaneously undressing.” An NCAA official told the women that Thomas was allowed because of a rule change that made the spaces “unisex.”

“And so I’m thinking to myself in these brief moments … you acknowledged that we do not share the same sex, first and foremost,” Gaines continued. “Secondly, unisex [means] any man could’ve walked into our locker room, any coach, any official, any man who wanted to would have had full reigns to and bare minimum we weren’t forewarned about it — and that’s the traumatizing part. Of course the experience in and of the locker room itself is traumatizing, but I think for me, it was so easy for them to dismiss our rights to privacy.”

Worse, she shared, Thomas’s teammates at the University of Pennsylvania “were forced every single week to go to mandatory LGBTQ education meetings to learn about how — just by being cisgender — they were oppressing Lia Thomas. They were told that they’re not allowed to take a stance because their school has already taken their stance for them. They were told, ‘You will never get a job,’ ‘You will never get into grad school,’ ‘You will lose your friends,’ ‘You will lose your scholarship and playing time if you speak out.’”

And yet, Durbin’s concern is not for America’s daughters, but for the trans-identifying children who might be listening. “When these young people, who are already struggling, hear … hateful rhetoric that denies their very existence, what message does it send?” he demanded to know.

Gaines took the senator head on. “… [M]y comeback to that is, what message does this send to women, to young girls, who are denied these opportunities? So easily, their rights to privacy and safety [are] thrown out the window to protect a small population, protect one group as long as they’re happy,” she said. “What about us? That is the overall general consensus of how we all felt in that locker room.”

Durbin didn’t answer her questions, instead firing back, “Since reference was made to my earlier statement, I would just like to add something for the record: There is no evidence that transgender athletes are an issue in certain levels of sports.”

Trans activist Kelley Robinson of the Human Rights Campaign tried — but failed — to give Durbin cover. When Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) asked the Democrats’ witness for an example of a woman playing in the NBA, Robinson replied with an incoherent answer about Serena Williams.

“There’s been this news article about men that think they can beat Serena Williams in tennis — that they think they can actually score a point on her,” Robinson said. “And it’s just not the case. She is stronger than them.”

Gaines immediately interjected, “Both Serena and Venus lost to the 203rd-ranked male tennis player.” As Breitbart pointed out, the swimmer was right. The famous sisters were both crushed by Karsten Braasch in 1998, who, at 31, was older than either of them.

More than a decade later, the world’s number one women’s player was open about the fact that women couldn’t measure up to men on the court. “So, if I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in 5 to 6 minutes, maybe 10 minutes,” Serena told David Letterman. When he disagreed, she shook her head. “No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. Men are a lot faster, and they serve harder and hit harder, it’s just a different game, and I only want to play girls, I don’t want to be embarrassed …”

And yet, four times Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked Robinson, “Do you believe there’s a difference between men and women?” Four times, the HRC chief refused to answer. “… [L]et me ask you this question then, why do women’s sports exist?” After all, Cruz said, “If you can’t find a difference between women and men, why not abolish women’s sports and just tell little girls to swim with little boys and see who wins?” Robinson replied that there were “many positive benefits to sports.”

Benefits, Gaines insists, that will vanish if the Democrats’ agenda succeeds. “Feminism is not a fluid term,” the swimmer insisted. And an overwhelming number of Americans agree. In an NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist poll released the same day as the hearing, 61% of the country — up 10% from May 2022 — agree “defining gender as the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate is the only way to define male and female in society.”

“The original and the meaning of what it means to be a feminist is to uphold, respect, honor, embrace and celebrate women on our own physical ceilings, our own uniqueness.” No matter what the Left says, Gaines stressed. “That term has not changed.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Moms for America: ‘We Are Going to Put the Pressure on the Senate’ to Pass Women’s Sports Bill

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

On June 7, a nonprofit by the name of Moms for America held a press conference on the Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C. to speak out about biological men competing in women’s sports across the country. H.R. 734, otherwise known as the Protection of Women’s Sports Act of 2023 has passed the House and is waiting for the Senate to schedule a vote. Professional and collegiate athletes gathered to share their stories along with different state representatives, all united under one objective: calling on the Senate to act and pass the bill.

Tennessee State Representative Diana Harshbarger (R) stated, “I know, as a health care professional, you cannot change somebody’s DNA.” She went on to note how we are in the middle of a spiritual battle. “As the Bible says, what is looked at as evil is now being looked at as good, and what is good is being looked at as evil. That is a spiritual message that I want to send to every American. … We cannot legislate morality.”

One by one, several female athletes also shared their experiences of competing with men identifying as women. Each experience was unique, yet all shared the same conclusion: sex is biology, not identity, and females simply cannot compare to males in terms of athleticism.

Macy Petty, a collegiate volleyball player, was the first to speak on behalf of the girls. Men increasingly stealing opportunities in women’s sports is a “direct threat to the integrity of the competition,” she emphasized. Early in her career, Petty had an opportunity to showcase her skills in front of several scouts. “On the other team was a very tall and athletic man,” she stated. “I did not sign up to be in a co-ed league. … The ruling authorities decided this boy’s feelings overrode our opportunity to play in a female only league. … With his biological advantages, he wooed the college scouts. I hate to think what young lady was passed over to make room for him on their [female] college team.”

After Petty shared her experience, other female athletes stepped forward with similar, heartbreaking stories about times that they were robbed of their sports opportunities as well. To conclude the press conference, Idaho State Representative Barbara Ehardt (R) spoke about how she has been an avid voice in this fight for sports equality throughout her lifetime. “I spent years fighting for opportunities for our girls and women [with Title IX]. Now we’re going backwards,” she said.

Ehardt emphasized how the culture is claiming to make sports a place of humanity, inclusion, and community by allowing men to compete against women. “Folks, I’m telling you, that’s not it at all,” she said. “When it comes to athletics, when it comes to keeping your job, it is about winning. If it wasn’t about winning, players wouldn’t get cut and coaches wouldn’t get fired. It’s about winning, make no mistake, and we cannot compete with the male counterparts.” Ehardt concluded by expressing how her passions have heightened since Title IX was first enacted in 1964. This is not an issue that’s relevant only to the present batch of competitors, she contended. This is an issue that has been debated and fought over for decades. “People, it’s a movement. … Step up, be courageous.”

The fight for integrity in women’s sports is raging, because it questions a fundamental truth. As Kassidy Comer, former college basketball player, told The Washington Stand, “You [cannot] ignore God’s plan for who we’re made to be. You know, we were crafted in the womb in His image, and He does not make mistakes. So, when you’re looking at it saying, ‘I know I was born this way, but I feel like I might be this way,’ that is just spiritual warfare, and that is my strong belief as a Christian.”

When asked how her faith helped her be bold in this fight, Comer responded, “I believe we are called to speak truth into this world. We are called to be salt and light. Salt and light can be invasive sometimes, [it] might hurt somebody’s feelings, but we’re called to speak truth … and that is one thing I’ve really tried to do with the platform I’ve been blessed with.”

Debbie Kraulidis, the vice president of Moms for America, stated that this fight is not an easy one, but it is certainly necessary. “We are going to put the pressure on the Senate to pass this bill,” she said. “It is up to us … to protect women’s sports.”

AUTHORS

Baylie McClafferty

 Sarah Holliday

RELATED ARTICLES:

Elle Fanning Says She Lost Out On Movie Role At 16 Because She Was Labelled ‘Unf*ckable’

4 Bible Passages to Help Shape a Christian Response to Pride Month

Minnesota Lawmakers Push Abortion and Gender Ideology with Passage of 800-Page Omnibus

Senator Tim Scott on ‘The View’: An Example of Civilized, Productive Debate

EDITOS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Alabama Bans Biological Men from Competing in Women’s College Sports

/in , , , , , , , , /by

On Tuesday, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (R) signed legislation prohibiting biological males who identify as transgender from competing in women’s college sports. The bill’s ratification marks the latest in a swath of legislation nationwide aimed at protecting fair play in women’s sports.

The Alabama law is the second measure enacted in the state in the last two years designed to protect female sports. In 2021, the Yellowhammer State put into practice legislation stating that girls’ sports in grades K-12 are limited to biological females.

According to Fox News, Alabama is one of 20 states nationwide that have put in place guidelines prohibiting biological males from competing in women’s sports in recent years. The wave of legislation comes as an increasing number of biological males are being allowed to compete in women’s sporting events, resulting in at least 30 women’s titles being claimed by biological men over the last 20 years, with the vast majority of those male wins occurring in the last four years alone.

“Look, if you are a biological male, you are not going to be competing in women’s and girls’ sports in Alabama,” Ivey said in a statement. “It’s about fairness, plain and simple.”

Alabama State Rep. Susan DuBose (R), the bill’s sponsor, was equally frank about the need for the legislation. “Forcing women to compete against biological men would reverse decades of progress that women have made for equal opportunity in athletics,” she said last month. DuBose went on to add that “no amount of hormone therapy can undo all those advantages” of being born male.

Still, some media outlets are claiming that the argument that biological male athletes have physical advantages over female athletes has “little basis in science,” as declared by the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday. But a 2020 study on transgender-identifying biologically male athletes found that even after two years of taking hormones to suppress their testosterone, they still retained a 12% advantage over female athletes in running tests. In a separate Canadian study that found similar results, the authors stated, “Testosterone suppression does not remove the athletic advantage acquired under high testosterone conditions at puberty, while the male musculoskeletal advantage is retained.”

A growing chorus of prominent women athletes and sportscasters have added their voices in support of fair play in women’s sports. In response to biological male transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas’s claim that it’s “transphobic” to limit women’s sports to biological women, Grand Slam tennis champion Martina Navratilova was blunt: “NEWSFLASH Lia — it’s not fair. We shouldn’t have to explain it to you over and over. Also — stop explaining feminism to feminists.”

After ESPN commentator Samantha Ponder recently admitted that she has had “so many [people message] me, stop me in the street to say thank you [and] tell me stories [about] girls who are afraid to speak up for fear of lost employment/being called hateful,” USA Today’s Nancy Armour claimed Ponder was promoting “bigotry.” But ESPN colleague Sage Steele came to Ponder’s defense, tweeting, “Pathetic attack on a WOMAN who is simply fighting for WOMEN in sports … Stay strong @samponder ..this is a lonely fight, but it’s worth it.”

It appears that the fight is becoming less lonely, as another ESPN commentator, who has since left the network, acknowledged that “as a woman … [it] was huge slap in the face” that ESPN celebrated Lia Thomas during Women’s History Month. Meanwhile, Riley Gaines, a former championship swimmer for the University of Kentucky, has become the face of the growing movement to protect women’s sports.

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council and a former NCAA Division I athlete, expressed support for Alabama’s bill protecting women’s collegiate sports.

“I am so grateful for the new Alabama law recognizing that it is unfair and unsafe for men to play women’s sports at the collegiate level,” she told The Washington Stand. “Sports are meant to teach life lessons, but when we allow men to play women’s sports, the only life lesson we’re teaching is that women will always come in second. I look forward to the day when all 50 states follow Alabama’s lead.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Twitter Drama Boosts “What Is A Woman?”

Senate Votes to Overturn Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program – Here Are the Democrats Who Voted with Republicans

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

School District Tells Gym Teachers To Wear Gay Flags, Use Preferred Pronouns To Make Class More ‘Inclusive’

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

A Colorado school district encouraged its physical education (P.E.) teachers to don LGBT pride gear and use preferred pronouns in an effort to display their support for the LGBTQ community, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a public records request.

On March 8, a group of Jeffco Public Schools high school teachers were trained on how to make the district’s P.E. programs “even more inclusive,” where all students feel welcome regardless of their “race, ethnicity or sexual orientation,” according to a presentation obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. Teachers were trained to engage in “public visibility” by sporting some sort of rainbow pride gear such as a pin or t-shirt, plan or participate in pride events and practice using preferred pronouns.

“We know from research and feedback from students around the country that visibility matters immensely in building inclusion,” the presentation read. “A pin, t-shirt, flags, stickers and use of pronouns are impactful ways of making a difference.”

Teachers can participate in “public visibility” by having “safe-space and ally messages” in waiting areas, hallways and in the locker room, the training stated. Teachers can also wear a “scarf, shirt, tie, lapel pin and shoes” to send a “strong message of support.”

“Guessing” someone’s preferred pronouns can be “offensive and harassing,” while using “correct” pronouns is a good way to show someone you respect them, the training stated. The presentation suggested that teachers include their pronouns on a white board, in their email signature, on their zoom profile and on their business cards.

Students should be allowed to use locker rooms and participate in P.E. classes on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex, though each transgender student should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, the training stated. To create an “inclusive and safe” locker room, the training suggested teachers use an “anonymous tip box” or “offer alternative spaces.”

“Unless precluded by state interscholastic association policies, students should be permitted to participate in interscholastic athletics in a manner consistent with their gender identity,” the training read.

For sports teams, teachers and coaches were encouraged to document “inclusion” and potentially modify team policies to state that all students are welcome “regardless of race, religion, sexuality or gender identity,” the training stated.

LGBTQ students experience “barriers” that keep them from exercising such as a “lack of safe spaces” in locker rooms and bathrooms, and “gendered classes and teams,” the training showed.

The Education Department (ED) released proposed changes to Title IX in April that, if adopted, would bar public K-12 schools and colleges from adopting a “one-size-fits-all-policy” and prohibit students from joining sports teams on the basis of gender identity. School districts throughout the nation are adopting policies to separate sports teams on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex; in April, the San Francisco State University athletics director claimed there is no “competitive” difference between men and women in sports.

“We will learn from each other to increase the sense of belonging for our students that identify as LGBTQ+, especially in the world of sports and PE,” the presentation stated.

Jeffco Public Schools did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

Contributor.

RELATED TWEETS: Elementary School Turned into LGBTQI+ Pride Indoctrination Camp

RELATED ARTICLE: Child Gender Clinic Trained Teachers To Help Transition Elementary School Kids

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘They’re Forced to Celebrate It’: Parents of Girls Losing to Boys Speak Out

/in , , , , , , , , /by

“How do you not understand that’s unfair?” It’s a question parents across the country are asking, as more and more of their daughters watch everything they train for vanish. For moms and dads at California’s CIF-North Coast Section Meet, the outrage reverberated across the stands. They watched as Adeline Johnson, an 18-year-old senior, was eliminated from the state track and field championships — all because a biological boy decided to compete as a girl. “There’s no way this should be allowed,” one parent fumed. And yet, if Joe Biden has his way, it will be the future of sports for every girl in America.

Until recently, the boy named Athena Ryan competed in men’s cross country, finishing a distant 63rd in the 2021 men’s 5,000 meters. But this past weekend, running as a girl, he placed second in the 1,600 — knocking real women down or off the podium. After the race, Ryan told reporters he wasn’t “expecting” to run as well as he did. “I dropped like 17 seconds on my season’s best in the past two weeks,” he bragged. “I was just coming here trying to break 5 — just glad I finished it out.”

People in the stands watched as Ryan blew past runners in the backfield toward the end of the race. “You either think that he is holding back,” a parent said, “or it’s his lactic threshold — which means he can access energy in the final part of the race. Girls can’t do that,” the spectator continued. “There is a physical way in which they race. Having a boy in there just throws off the mechanics of the race.”

To the families who’ve helped their daughters train and shuttled them back and forth to meets, the whole sport is becoming a sham. “I 100% percent empathize with the need to belong and the desire to compete,” another anonymous parent said. “[But] you have to understand how hard these girls work to do this.”

Johnson, who will watch Ryan take her place at the state finals later this spring, went viral for giving a subtle thumbs-down during the medal ceremony for her race. To some parents, that was a bold gesture since the girls have been advised to ignore the unfairness of it all and smile along.

“It’s heartbreaking to see what happens to these kids and how scared they are to even show the slightest bit of body language that might indicate they aren’t happy with it,” a family member told The Daily Caller. “They’re, like, forced to celebrate it.”

Worse, that protocol seems to extend to parents, who explain, “We have all been advised that we are not protected. As a family, anything we say falls under the student code of conduct [which demands conformity to the trans agenda]. If we don’t follow the guidelines, then it is considered bullying.” And since “they can’t protect our girls from being disqualified,” it makes sense “why no one wants to speak out.”

“Everybody is too terrified to challenge it. There is the fear of what will happen, what will be taken away, and if you won’t be allowed to race — or if you’ll be canceled.”

Even spectators were silenced, after security decided to remove a group of protestors holding a long banner that read, “Protect Female Sports.” The video, which got plenty of attention on social media, shows the group being confronted by another woman, who calls their sign “disgusting” and “offensive.” For others, however, the escort out of the stadium was a moment of clarity. “Many parents were completely unaware there was a boy competing in girls’ races,” the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) explained.

And not just one boy, as former University of Kentucky swimmer and Title IX advocate Riley Gaines pointed out. A “2nd trans-identifying male, Lorelei Barrett is headed to the @CIFState CA track championships next weekend,” she tweeted. “Along with male Athena Ryan, he’s also qualified in the ‘Girls 1600m’ race. Barrett had qualified for the girls state cross country championships last fall …”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing its obsession on erasing women with a new rule that would wipe away state protections for girls’ sports. Now that public comments have been collected, it’s only a matter of time before Title IX is effectively wiped away.

This, critics say, despite a resurfaced study from the federal government’s own National Institutes of Health which found that biological boys are “faster, stronger, fitter” after taking female hormones.

“A major review quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) last August suggests that early exposure to testosterone means trans women possess at least eight physical and mental attributes that could give them an advantage in sports — even if they make the change relatively early.

“Findings showed trans women had greater muscle mass and bone density, which aid strength, power and durability, plus bigger lungs and higher oxygen levels, which help with endurance, as well as increased connections in the brain responsible for spatial awareness, which could help with agility.”

In other words, Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon says, “The Biden administration is further confusing and pressuring schools to adopt these policies, while acknowledging that boys and girls are different and boys have an advantage over girls in competitive sports.”

Parents need to understand, she told The Washington Stand, this isn’t just happening at public schools. “This story is an example of what can happen in private schools when decision-making authority is outsourced to sports’ governing bodies or academic associations. Some of the most woke schools in the country are exclusive prep schools [like Sonoma Academy where these athletes were from].”

There’s a lesson here for religious schools, Kilgannon urged: “Make sure your governing documents are sufficient to withstand an attack from within. Mary Hasson’s work at Person and Identity Project is a great example of the kinds of safeguards, programs, and professional development religious schools need to protect your children and your institution against this ideology.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Team Biden Joins the School Library Wars, Launching Federal Investigation

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

UPDATE:

“Whoever succeeds in telling the stories to the children gets to control the future.” That was Kirk Cameron’s answer to people wondering why he’s joined the debate over America’s libraries. As parents everywhere fight to keep graphic content out of their children’s hands, Texas officials are warning the battle is taking an ominous turn. It’s not just the forces of the Left that communities will have to contend with. It’s the federal government, whose new investigation into a local school district could upend every grassroots effort to protect kids.

For leaders in Texas’s Granbury School District, the bomb dropped shortly before Christmas. Officials in the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) said they’d received a formal complaint from the ACLU that the small community outside Fort Worth was somehow violating the government’s definition of “sex” by pulling books from school library shelves.

The ACLU’s beef dates back to November 2021 when Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged the state’s association of school boards to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.” His letter, which keyed off parents’ growing outrage about the material on school shelves, insisted on greater transparency about the content students can access. Abbott said his office had been contacted by a number of moms and dads who were “rightfully angry” about the “pornographic and obscene” content.

Granbury officials took the governor’s directive to heart, ordering a review of the district’s book titles. But what ultimately landed the district in hot water was a candid conversation Superintendent Jeremy Glenn had with the schools’ librarians — which was eventually leaked to the press. He talked about the conservative make-up of the community and insisted that they would act accordingly. “We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said in a reference to the two new school board members. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”

At the end of the day, Glenn insisted, “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” the superintendent went on. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries. … I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn insisted. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”

Over the next two weeks, Granbury embarked on what the Texas Tribune called “one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review.” Two months later, the volunteer review committee inexplicably voted to return all but three books that they’d permanently banned.

By then, the audio of Glenn’s meeting had made its way to the media, and liberal news outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and NBC News pounced, accusing Glenn of anti-LGBT bias. That’s when the local chapter of the ACLU got involved, demanding an apology and calling for every book to be reinstated.

Glenn didn’t oblige, conveying through district spokesman Jeff Meador that all the titles they’d pulled from shelves are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate.” That said, the libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including,” he pointed out, “books that analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”

Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the ACLU, whose lawyers decided to involve the federal government in a local dispute that could have a chilling effect nationwide. “If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor,” The Washington Post cautioned, “the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators — amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans — to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.”

Of course, the heart of the ACLU’s allegation — that Granbury (and Glenn, especially) is violating the Left’s new definition of “sex” — is a stretch by almost every legal standard. The Biden administration may have twisted the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but that interpretation has never been passed into federal Title IX law.

And yet, the ACLU’s Chloe Kempf maintains (unconvincingly) that the “book removals and also the comments create this pervasively hostile environment.” “Both send a message to the entire community that LGBTQ identities are inherently obscene, worthy of stigmatization — and the book removals uniquely deprive LGBTQ students of the opportunity to read books that reflect their own experiences.”

Conservatives pushed back, insisting that this isn’t about LGBT hostility but age-appropriate content. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, insisted that this whole controversy amounts to a leftist intimidation campaign. “The ACLU is bullying school districts who have responded to parental concerns about pornographic library books offered to children. Access to pornography at school is not a civil right.” Even if the law had been changed to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX, “children still do not have a right to sexually explicit or violent content in public school library books. And school systems are under no obligation to support a publishing industry who can’t sell these books to parents and so sells them to librarians instead.”

Frankly, Kilgannon argued, “This is federal overreach into the education system, which is supposed to be a state issue.” Not to mention that “Biden is weaponizing another government agency: the DOE.”

If the president does intervene, dictating how school libraries handle certain book titles, the issue will almost certainly end up in court. “This isn’t the sort of civil rights issue that requires federal intervention,” Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argued. “It’s a question about books in schools, not about individual rights being violated.”

Either way, it does show one thing: the potency of the parents’ movement. Cameron, who’s in his own fight to host story hours in the same libraries that allow drag queens, is witnessing the momentum firsthand. As many as 1,000 people turned out in Placentia, Calif. to hear the “Growing Pains” actor read his new book, “As You Grow.”

“I know why parents and grandparents are coming out of the woodwork,” Cameron told The Federalist. “They understand there is a war on children — and nobody’s going to stop it but us.” So if there’s one thing Americans can do, he told the crowd, it’s this: “Don’t just talk about what’s going on. Change what’s going on.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Frederik Jansen on the link between LGBTQ+ and the Frankfurt School – The Laughland Report

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Admin Plans To Roll Back Trump-Era Free Speech Protections In Education

/in , , , , , , , /by

‘A guilty until proven innocent standard.’

  • President Joe Biden’s administration is planning to roll back current Title IX regulations, which experts argue will revoke protections for both the accuser and the accused in sexual assault cases and threaten freedom of speech at federally funded schools. 
  • “It ultimately returns Title IX back to a guilty until proven innocent standard,” Sarah Perry, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation said.
  • “Any changes could put students’ free speech rights at risk and will only exacerbate the problem of self-censorship that has been plaguing our campuses,” Speech First executive director Cherise Trump said. 

President Joe Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) is planning to roll back Title IX due process regulations implemented by former President Donald Trump’s administration, which experts argue will revoke protections for both the accuser and the accused in sexual assault cases and threaten freedom of speech.

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is planning to rewrite the rules outlined in Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments that set sexual harassment standards at federally funded schools. The Biden administration’s changes would reverse 2020 due process protections that require federal K-12 and higher education schools to investigate Title IX violations in a fair and unbiased manner, which includes the right to be represented by counsel, the presumption of innocence, the ability to cross examine and to introduce witnesses, experts told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Proponents of the current standards argue they fixed problems created by former President Barack Obama’s Education Department; before the 2020 changes, instances of sexual assault and harassment were only recognized as instances of unlawful sex discrimination through regulations that were not legally binding. However, under the current standards, school districts, colleges and universities have a legal obligation to respond to such cases in a fair and unbiased manner.

Under the Trump administration’s standards, instances of sexual assault at federal schools are handled more like “quasi-judicial proceedings,” Sarah Perry, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation, told TheDCNF.

“It ultimately returns Title IX back to a guilty until proven innocent standard … as opposed to leaving it to one Title IX investigator to determine who was right and who was wrong, in a ‘he said, she said’ proceeding,” Perry said.

Speech First executive director Cherise Trump told TheDCNF that the rules changes will likely be weaponized against constitutionally protected speech, which could make students subject to “harassment” for their personal or political stances.

The current Title IX regulations that were implemented in 2020 are consistent with a Supreme Court precedent known as the Davis Standard, which concluded that “student-on-student harassment must be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive its victims of access to a school’s educational programs or activities,” Trump explained.

“This is a pretty high threshold that protects students from being accused of harassment for simply voicing their opinions and possibly offending someone with their ideas,” Trump said. In response, universities frequently manipulate Title IX language to fit a more “broad-sweeping definition” such as “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive…” to “severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive,” she explained.

The small change in wording allows school administrators to restrict and punish speech they believe is “offensive,” “unwanted” or “problematic,” but would not be considered harassment under current Title IX rules, she said.

“Previously, the process for adjudicating serious harassment allegations on campus had been plagued by bias, vagueness, and overreach,” Trump added. “Any changes could put students’ free speech rights at risk and will only exacerbate the problem of self-censorship that has been plaguing our campuses.”

A Republican coalition of 15 state attorneys general have expressed legal concern about the DOE’s plans to roll back the “historic” move that codified sexual harassment regulations under Title IX into law, arguing the previous standards were unworkable and unfair.

“Hundreds of successful lawsuits against schools for denying basic due process and widespread criticism from across the ideological spectrum arose from the Obama-era rules“ the statement said. “The rules also resulted in a disproportionate number of expulsions and scholarship losses for Black male students.”

The Department of Education did not respond to The DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

KENDALL TIETZ

Education reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Republicans Say They Have Proof FBI Targeted Concerned Parents, Despite Garland Denials

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.