They’re targeting kids, because of course they are.
Texas Republicans are again trying to limit the ways transgender youth can participate in athletics.
Lawmakers have filed legislation that would ban transgender girls and women who attend public K-12 schools, colleges and universities from playing on single-sex sports teams designated for girls and women.
One bill filed by Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, is similar to others filed across the country that are characterized by conservative advocates as trying to maintain fairness in women’s sports. Idaho passed a law last year called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” In Montana, a similar bill, called the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” advanced to the state Senate this week.
According to a tally from the American Civil Liberties Union, nine other states have similar bills moving through the legislative process this year, including Mississippi, Connecticut and Tennessee. According to Equality Texas, more states are also filing bills this year that would apply these policies to colleges as well.
The University Interscholastic League of Texas, which governs high school athletics and extracurricular activities, relies on students’ birth certificates to determine whether they participate in men’s or women’s athletics. Notably, the UIL will recognize changes made to birth certificates to alter their gender marker.
Texas universities follow National College Athletic Association rules for division athletics, and some apply similar policies to intramural sports. Texas A&M University and the University of Houston allow students to play on the intramural team of the gender they identify.
This year’s legislative session could see yet another wave of debates over civil rights for LGBTQ youth. The next four years are likely to feature federal battles with Republican-led states, with the Biden administration already pledging to apply discrimination protections to sexual orientation and gender identity, and rolling back the order that banned transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.
In previous sessions, Texas Republicans, like those in other states, unsuccessfully pursued so-called “bathroom bills” that would prevent transgender people from using the bathroom that matched their gender identity. Now, LGBTQ advocates said conservatives across the country are latching onto issues related to athletics and health care as the latest way to spread fear about transgender children using inaccurate information, despite opposition from medical and athletic associations.
“This is bathroom bill 3.0,” said Angela Hale, senior adviser at Equality Texas. “It’s very unsettling to transgender children who just want to live. They don’t want to have to come down to the Capitol and testify every single legislative session just so that they can live and go about their daily lives.”
Republican lawmakers also filed a bill that would make it a crime for doctors and mental health providers to provide care to children that affirms their gender identity, perform gender-confirming surgeries or prescribe hormone treatments, characterizing these actions as “abuse.”
Advocates said lawmakers in at least five states have filed the bill restricting medical access for trans youth in tandem with the restrictive sports bill.
There’s more and you should read the rest, I’m too angry to think much more about it right now. The bills in question are based on ignorance and animosity, and would cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. I will never understand what causes a person to think this way, and I will never forgive a legislator who supports such things.
I once again ask those of you with daughters, particularly those with daughters in sports, say softball, or soccer, how you’ll feel when the men invade your daughter’s teams. How you’ll feel when the men who feel like women get the college scholarships, win the awards, and set the records. You might be rethinking things a bit when your daughter comes home injured, or in tears because a biological male hurt her on the field, or got the scholarship that otherwise would have gone to your daughter.
This isn’t even an evil conservative/Trump supporter position. This is the position of feminists, including the TERF’s.
I trust this is a suitably leftist source for everyone:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/02/21/on-the-left-a-new-clash-between-feminists-and-transgender-activists/
“Specifically, some feminists are defending protections and opportunities won expressly for women. WoLF and other critics reject the idea that a man should legally be a woman with the right to occupy protected women’s spaces simply because he says he’s one, feels like one, wears dresses, takes hormones, or even has a sex-change operation.
Beyond that, they argue that far from promoting hateful “transphobic” notions that ought to be shouted down, their goal is to protect women and children from wrongheaded ideas that would harm them.
“Disagreements over sex and gender have cleaved the feminist community,” Libby Emmons, a member of WoLF, wrote in the online magazine Quillette. This is, she continued, “an unusually vicious front in the culture war.””
Bill is correct, that transgender women dominate girls and women’s sports if allowed to compete. I don’t see how it is fair that someone who is a cis female may not make the team due to a transgender female outperforming her and getting the spot. The same goes for competition for an athletic scholarship.
I understand the difficulty of being a transgender person, but would disagree with having it be an unfair advantage.
Meanwhile, the idea of non binary makes no sense to me.
Someone’s channeling Rand Paul from yesterday hearing.
Connecticut lawsuit…..girls’ dreams dashed, college scholarship hopes crushed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/19/girls-say-connecticuts-transgender-athlete-policy-violates-title-ix-file-federal-complaint/