Following the example more than 20 other GOP-leaning states that are using the issue to limit transgender rights, sex-obsessed Republicans in Florida took a bad idea and made it worse.
In the words of a critics on Twitter: “Florida Republicans voted to inspect the genitals of children yesterday. Matt Gaetz is not an outlier. He is the norm in a sick and disturbed party.”
The controversy stems from a measure called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, a bill that creates a process for handling disputes about sports qualifications by requiring a visual inspection to verify a student’s sex.
The 77-40 vote mostly followed party-lines with all but one Democrat opposing the legislation, which includes a perverse requirement subjecting children to an inspection of their genitalia.
“HB 1475 is purely political, and it plays on the fears and the ignorance about the transgender community in order to score partisan points,” said Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a lawmaker from Orlando.
Critics contend that laws restricting transgender participation in sports violate both the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding.
Idaho, which became the first state to approve a law that mandates athletes compete in sports consistent with their biological sex, has come under fire from civil rights groups that have filed legal challenges.
But unlike their counterparts in Idaho, Florida Republicans are being accused of “state-sanctioned sexual assault against children.”
Under the Florida measure, schools would have to resolve disputes “by requesting that the student provide a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal health care provider which must verify the student’s biological sex.”
The measure provides that a student’s sex would be determined by their reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup or “normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
Transgender is a term used to describe people whose gender or sense of personal identity does not match the sex they were born with. In other words, a transgender person may have been born as a male but identifies as a female or vice versa.
Fewer than one-half of one percent of the people in the world are transgender, so the practical impact on sports participation is almost nil but sanctimonious, self-righteous Republicans are running out of victims to bully, so they are grasping at straws.
When it comes to LGBTQ rights, the United States has made significant strides over the years. Several states have protections for transgender people, including employment, public accommodations, housing, credit, and schools.
Those civil rights advances occurred after gay activists discovered that prejudice and fear diminished when people learned that family, friends, neighbors and others they knew were among the victims of discrimination.
States that do not have these protections in place are rushing to persecute transgender athletes for their sexual identity, using as justification the supposed disadvantage to female competing against someone born as a male.
Only 30 years ago, 57 percent of Americans believed consensual gay sex should be illegal. Today, same-sex marriage has been achieved nationally, gays can serve openly in the military, and most gay people live in states that protect them from discrimination.
An openly gay man waged a serious campaign for president and his homosexuality was considered immaterial, if not an advantage.
According to the Pew Research Center, 70 percent of Americans believe homosexuality should be accepted, an all-time high.
The Women’s Sports Foundation supports the right of all athletes, including transgender athletes, to participate in athletic competition that is fair, equitable and respectful to all.
In response to the string of discriminatory laws, more than 500 collegiate athletes from at least 85 schools across the country and across multiple sports, sent a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors, demanding that they address the need for all competitors to be equally provided safety and inclusion.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) published a 38-page handbook in 2011 that said educational institutions, “are well advised to proactively adopt policies and best practices that provide equal opportunities for transgender students to participate on sports teams. Moreover, in the spirit of encouraging sports participation for all, it is the right thing to do.”
The NCAA put states that legalize bullying for transgender students on notice, warning that locations that don’t treat all student athletes with “dignity and respect” could be ineligible to host future championship games.
The NCAA said laws to stop any students from participating in sports is “harmful to transgender student-athletes and conflicts with the NCAA’s core values of inclusivity, respect and the equitable treatment of all individuals.”
In addition to existing federal protections, a growing number of states have enacted laws protecting students in schools from discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The folks who are pushing these anti-trans bills … they don’t believe transgender people exist. They think they’re faking it for an advantage in sports,” said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director at the Human Rights Campaign. “I don’t know how you find a middle ground between a hate group and people pushing for equality.”
That becomes even harder when few trans people exist, making it difficult for them to be acquainted with enough others to inspire more acceptance the way gay activists did by ‘coming out’ earlier in the struggle for civil rights.
As Ineke Mushovic, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project, said, “Most Americans want to do the right thing, but they have never met a transgender person, so they have misconceptions.”
Calculating sponsors of these predatory laws depict their victims as the predators, equating people of a less common sexual orientation or identity with rapists and pedophiles, categories that are more common among Christian clergy than they are in the LGBT community.
Still, the hysteria such appeals generate makes if tough to cut through the political rhetoric and convince intentionally frightened people to consider the serious challenges faced by transgender people—such as discrimination that is still legal in most states.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed SB354, a bill that prohibit transgender women from playing women’s sports in Arkansas on March 25, 2021.
“I have studied the law and heard from hundreds of constituents on this issue. I signed the law as a fan of women’s sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully,” said Hutchinson. “This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition. As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”
Despite signing such a outdated, unfair and plainly bigoted law, Hutchinson’s job approval remains high at 69% among Arkansas voters.
There is no guarantee that parents in Florida will be as happy as those in Arkansas, at least when their kids come home from school and tell about how they were forced to expose themselves to a stranger before the coach would admit them to gym class.
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