Consequences related to the legitimacy of transgenderism continue. The world of competitive sports for females can be made into a lawyer’s delight when males newly claiming to be females compete, and usually win, in weight-lifting events, track and field competitions, and more. All a male has to do to compete against the gals is claim to have transitioned.
No one should have to point out that males are biologically better equipped to run faster, jump higher, lift more, etc., than females. Bodily makeup, especially the amount of testosterone in the body, is the ingredient making the difference. And inexpensive testing of an individual’s DNA also confirms what sex a person truly is.
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In a few locales, authorities overseeing female sporting events have come up with several rules attempting to stop biological males from competing against biological females. But courts have generally decided that anyone claiming to be a female athlete can’t be barred from competing in what was supposed to an all-female contest. So the madness has to be stopped some other way.
On March 30, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed two bills into law attempting to keep the transgender fad from ruining female sports. Both measures had been approved by the state’s legislative bodies. The first bars transgender females from competing in women’s sports. The second prohibits changing which sex is noted on one’s birth certificate. Sensible? Absolutely. Challenged by leftists and those who delight in tearing down America’s admirable cultural standards? Of course.
What makes sense in the culture arena increasingly results in challenges mounted by legal jiu-jitsu artists and do-good corporations. Few Idahoans were surprised when Kathy Griesmyer of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union immediately claimed that the testing provision discriminated against transgender youth. Chobani Yogurt Company and Hewlett-Packard tried hard to stop Governor Little from signing the measures.
Idaho state Representative Barbara Ehardt, a sponsor of the measures, once played and coached in the NCAA’s Division 1 women’s basketball competition. She claimed: “We physically cannot compete against biological boys, and once those opportunities are lost, they are gone and you can’t get them back.” She has fond memories the 1972 application of the Title IX ban on sex discrimination in education that opened up athletic competition for girls and women. She strongly believes that allowing transgender boys to claim being female and compete in sporting events “could literally tear teams and communities apart.”
As the transgender fetish continues to grow, sporting events aren’t alone in being affected. The Lambda Legal organization claims the law signed by Governor Little has already been negated by a court injunction that ruled, not about sporting events, but about employment. Mistie Tolman, Idaho director for Planned Parenthood in the Northwest, condemned the governor and the legislators for “pleasing their bigoted base instead of doing what is right.” Is it a right to change a birth certificate? Does the Planned Parenthood expect that the growing number of men who want to be known as women increase the customer base for abortion?
God made each us either male or female. Trying to alter what occurs naturally is equivalent to suspending the law of gravity or replacing winter’s cold with more of August’s warmth. Neither can be done. So, too, has the Maker of each of us decided what our gender is — and not from birth but from conception. So we salute Idaho’s governor and the Idaho state officials who have taken a correct stand that shouldn’t need a law to defend it.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.
