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Friday, October 11, 2024 - 09:59 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Girls & Women In Sports Day

“Why is it always women fighting against sex-based protections?” Riley Gaines wondered. “That will forever be beyond me.” The former All-American swimmer could only shake her head at the latest attack on girls’ sports by Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-Calif.), the latest high-profile Democrat to throw her sex overboard in the raging battle for transgenderism.

“It’s an extraordinary state of affairs,” “Fox Nation” host Piers Morgan said afterward, “when two middle-aged men, me and Bill Maher, were standing up vociferously for women’s rights to fairness and equality, and a congresswoman who wants to be a senator was incapable of doing that. And that, to me, exposed the fragility at the heart of this woke position on this whole transgender debate.”

Porter was a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” when the conversation turned to Gaines’s push to save girls’ sports. The California Democrat announced that she disagreed with the former University of Kentucky athlete “strongly.” When Morgan pressed her about what Gaines had done or said that she disapproved of, Hobbs claimed Riley was “using things to kind of get likes and get clicks.” “That’s not what she’s doing,” Morgan fired back. “It’s not?” Porter asked incredulously.

The Brit insisted, “All I’ve seen her do is stand up for women’s rights to fairness and equality. She competed against [biological male] Lia Thomas, and it was obviously unfair.” Then “our sporting bodies should be dealing with it,” Porter argued, before claiming she respects Riley’s “free speech.”

Later, Morgan seemed appalled by the whole exchange, arguing on his home network, “It’s time that female politicians, in particular in America, Democrat politicians, stop this nonsense and stood up for women’s rights.”

As for Porter’s allegation that Riley was “speaking up for herself,” Gaines clarified, “I’m not speaking up for myself… I’m done playing sports. I’m not fighting for me. I’m actually supposed to be in dental school this year. But I’ve changed my life plans because I see what’s at stake if someone doesn’t fight for the present and next generation.”

Someone who’s obviously not fighting for present and future generations is President Joe Biden, who announced Monday that if Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-Fla.) girls’ sports bill makes it to his desk, he’d veto it. In the White House’s Statement of Administration Policy, the president’s team called the proposal “discriminatory.” Siding with the woke ideology that’s erasing women from fields, courts, and diamonds across America, the White House claimed, “Politicians should not dictate a one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams.”

According to Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon, “one size fits all” is “a Biden administration specialty when it comes to the transgender agenda. They will sacrifice safety and fairness for women and girls to advance the cause of men/boys who think they are women/girls. This is a movement driven from the top down,” she told The Washington Stand, “and the Biden administration is doing its part to suppress opposition by threatening and bullying even Members of Congress.”

With a whopping 93 Republican co-sponsors, Steube is making it clear that Americans don’t share the Democrats’ extreme views. “This is an 80% issue,” the Florida congressman told “The Faulkner Focus.” And frankly, he said, “I think every American should know where their member of Congress sits on this issue.” Let’s not forget, Steube explained, “Title IX was created by Congress 50 years ago for women’s sports — to allow women to be able to compete with each other at collegiate levels and activities and sports. And this [would] completely [do] away with [that] … by allowing biological males to compete with women in women’s sports.”

And, as Steube reminded everyone, “The other piece of this, too, is having biological men that are identifying as women in girls’ bathrooms and girls’ locker rooms changing with them [and] all the things that come with that. The American people don’t support that.”

Neither, presumably, do a majority of the House, who will have an opportunity to vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act later this week.

As for Gaines, she’ll continue to put her own safety at risk to stop an agenda that she calls “manipulative” and “violent.” “This whole movement,” she insisted, “it’s vengeful, it’s hateful. I’ve never seen a movement quite like this movement.” She should know after her April visit to San Francisco State University, a school she’s now suing after being attacked on campus and barricaded in a room after an angry mob chased her out of a discussion on Title IX and threatened her.

“I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when agreeing to speak at this university,” she wrote in a new op-ed, “but I was wrong. There was no way to prepare myself for what happened.”

“People always wonder why more women aren’t speaking up,” Gaines went on, “(especially the female athletes who have firsthand experience competing against a male). This is why,” she insists about her own horrifying experience.

Even so, Riley believes, “The protestors’ plan backfired on them. They intended to silence me, but they only gave me a larger platform. My social media following quadrupled, and the public support around the world to protect women’s sports and sex-based rights skyrocketed. The general public is now more eager to get involved in the fight than ever before.”