VA Dems to End Girls’ Sports!
On Friday, we learned that the Senate Democrats on the Public Education Sub-Committee (Janet Howell, Mamie Locke, Ghazala Hashmi) are perfectly fine with biological males being able to compete and take key spots on girls’ athletic teams – like track, tennis, volleyball, and field hockey. It was an outrageous admission on their part!
In a 3-2 party line vote, the subcommittee advanced SB 161, patroned by Jennifer Boysko (D-33, Herndon), which requires the Department of Education to develop model policies for handling “transgender” students that would be dictated on every school district in Virginia. These policies would require students to be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, allow biological males to compete on all-female sports teams, and demand that students and teachers use a student’s preferred pronouns which they simply declare from one day to the next.
During the debate, the two Republican Senators Mark Peake and Siobhan Dunnavant who opposed the bill asked very important questions that exposed some of the dangers of the bill. Senator Dunnavant expressed concerns over the provision of the bill that would allow biological males to compete for spots on female athletic teams, noting the unique physiological advantages that males have over women (to which members of the crowd could be heard scoffing).
While we are seeing this crop up in numerous states, there are some brave girls that are fighting back, like the two female track athletes from Connecticut who’ve filed a Title IX complaint against Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for allowing two biological males to compete on a rival female track team. These two males have managed to rack up a combined total of 17 high school girl’s track state championships in just two years.
Senator Peake followed by inquiring about whether the term “transgender” is defined anywhere in the bill itself or in Virginia law (which it’s NOT). When Senator Boysko answered that she “wasn’t sure,” Peake asked her if she could explain the meaning of the word “transgender.” After a very long and awkward pause, Senator Boysko said she didn’t fully understand it and then called on her friends from Equality Virginia to answer. Not surprisingly, Equality Virginia did not attempt to define “transgender” but instead said that the “experts” at the Department of Education – who are unelected bureaucrats – would be charged with developing the definition!
Notably, Senator Boysko also declared that there are more than two sexes, including “non-binary” and presumably limitless others. However, she made no comments on how many possible variations of pronouns that would imply would have to be incorporated by every student, teacher, and staff member.
At the end of the hearing, Senator Dunnavant motioned to strike from the bill the provision that would allow for biological males to compete on female athletic teams and citing several legal cases ongoing over this issue, but all three Democrats voted it down.
Now SB 161 will go before the full Senate Education and Health committee, where we may have another opportunity stop or amend this dangerous bill that poses serious threats to student privacy and safety, parental authority, girls’ sports, religious liberty, and cultural sanity.
