FORT WORTH, Texas — According to our Texas lawmakers, the boys in your baby girl's class are about to take her spot atop the sports podium, and in the process steal her coveted Division I athletic scholarship and path to Olympic fame.
Parents, welcome to the Bathroom Bill 2.0.
Now, we're told, we have transgender athletes who are ruining sports, who will end your daughter's sports dreams.
This is not as big of an issue as many in Austin, or social media memes, want you to believe. It is an issue, but on the entire athletic landscape it's the size of a fraction of a decimal point.
Find something else to worry about.
There is one need, and that is to ensure that competition is fair. Allow common sense, not ignorance, to have its place.
If someone wants to "play up" — i.e. a girl playing a tennis match, a round of golf, etc. against the boys, have at it.
If a person's testosterone levels are altered to a distinct advantage through a needle, that's no different than the baseball player who 'roids so he can hit a home run. That's against the spirit of fair play.
Two weeks ago, the Texas Senate approved a bill that said a student cannot participate in sports "that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student's biological sex as determined at the student's birth and correctly stated on the student's official birth certificate."
The bill would also mandate students to show their original, unchanged birth certificate to prove their sex at birth. Think of it as a voter ID card to play a softball game.
Similar bills have been proposed all over the country, with Oklahoma passing a version this week.
It sounds as if the Texas version of this bill ultimately will be defeated, at least according to lawmakers. State Rep. Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat, told Hearst Newspapers on Wednesday that after a debate this week he believes the bill won't pass the Public Education Committee.
This is one of those issues that affects a few dozen people, but the headline stirs millions, and inspires people to vote.
The people who are so upset about this likely don't even know the specifics, and exactly the lengths, and pain, involved to have gender re-assignment surgeries.
To follow through on this takes years. Therapy. Counseling. There's a better chance of a young person finishing high school before they complete this sort of procedure.
This is such an issue that NCAA hasn't adjusted its "Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation" policy for about 10 years. Because there is no need to do much else.
The NCAA's stance on transgender athletes in sports requires that the person has mitigated their sex-linked performance advantages before they play in women's sports.
That typically involves hormonal therapy or testosterone blockers.
The Texas UIL follows the same policies.
Former U.S. Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar is a founding member the Women's Sports Policy Working Group that includes former women's tennis star Martina Navratilova, gold medal swimmer Donna de Varona and others.
As an Olympian in the '80s, Hogshead-Makar competed against East German swimmers who famously devoured performance-enhancing drugs like squirrels on a bag of nuts.
"What we are saying is we are going to draw boundaries," Hogshead-Makar said this week in a phone interview. "To give women a fair chance you have to have sex segregation."
Traditionally that means looking at your birth certificate. These days, it comes down to testosterone levels.
If a person's levels are where they should be to play against females, or males, that's that.
"We're trying so hard to be about science and not about left or right. That's how we were able to get Title IX passed," she said. "Republicans have daughters, too. We don't want sports to be a vehicle for people to express their condemnation of their hate for transgender people."
Even the doctors and medical professionals who handle this subject concede it's confusing. It's also foreign to the vast majority of Americans who can't conceive of the need for such medical procedures.
Those considering gender reassignment surgery are often ostracized and made to feel as if something is wrong with them. There is depression and, sometimes, suicide that most of us never see In 2020, murders of trans people reached its highest level since groups started tracking it.
No one is doing this procedure for fun.
A boy is not going through all this to win a match or a race in the girls' division.
And anybody who does all that is required of them to become transgender is not a threat to your kid, or their athletic success.
Find something else to worry about.
