Restroom directive greatly impacts sports

This column appeared in the May 18 edition of The Anderson News. 


     I wonder what would happen if sometime during the spring, a thoroughbred horse owner concluded that his prized 3-year-old colt really identified as a filly.
     Could he petition to let his horse run in the Kentucky Oaks or the Black-Eyed-Susans Stakes? Or if he wanted to still run in the Triple Crown races, would he get a 5-pound weight allowance?
     Absurd? Of course, it is.
     But it’s no more absurd than the directive out of Washington last week that could greatly affect sports as we know them.
     While much has been said about President Obama’s administration sending a directive to allow transgender access to bathrooms, the letter sent to school systems across the nation last Friday goes much further than where someone can relieve himself. In the “Dear Colleague” letter, you will find some of the most ridiculous gobbledygook to ever come out of Washington.
     And that is saying something.
     The nine-page document, footnotes and all, can be found online at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201605-title...
     The portion of the letter most are debating is headed “Restrooms and Locker Rooms.”
     The section says schools may offer separate facilities on the basis of sex, i.e., a boys’ room and a girls’ room, “but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so. A school may, however, make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.”
     The letter makes it very clear that “gender identity” is to be equated with “sex.”
     In other words, what you feel is what you are.
     The letter also deals with athletics, saying that schools can sponsor sex-segregated teams but a school can’t “adopt or adhere to requirements that rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex (i.e., the same gender identity) or others’ discomfort with transgender students.”
     So, what we have to look forward to is a boy who claims he’s a girl demand to join the girls’ basketball team and have access to the locker room.
     Think it can’t happen? Think again.
     Several states already have laws allowing student-athletes to compete based on “gender identity.” While Kentucky has no such law, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association already has a transgender and cross-gender policy.
     Earlier this year, a transgender student at Fremd High School in Illinois won access to the girls’ locker room. According to the “Chicago Tribune,” a large number of parents were predictably upset at the ruling, which was based on an interpretation of the Title IX act of 1972.
     Whether the student was seeking access for gym class or for a scholastic sport does not matter.
     What is so bothersome about the directive is that local officials have often tried to provide accommodations as a compromise.
     Several media colleagues have told me about area schools that have had girls on their football teams in recent years. While that does not mean those girls are identifying as boys, there is a principle in that the schools provided separate dressing room facilities.
     At Anderson County High School, the policy is if someone identifies as a transgender, a private restroom facility is provided.
     But, according to the directive, that’s not good enough. If a biological boy identifies as a girl, he should have the right to the girls’ locker room and vice-versa.
     That is utter insanity.
     From this corner, it is more than just where someone goes to the bathroom. It’s common decency. Gender dysphoria, the clinical term for those who fell they are the opposite sex, is listed as a disorder in psychiatric manuals.
     Do we really want treatment of a disorder by discounting the rights of privacy, modesty and decorum and replace them with social engineering in locker rooms?
     And, of course, if schools don’t allow such nonsense, they risk losing federal funding.
     It is interesting that Johns Hopkins University, a pioneer in performing sex change surgeries, no longer performs them and the longtime psychiatrist in chief there has been a vocal opponent of the surgery for several years. Of course, those who want to promote this discount that information since it doesn’t further the agenda.
     The irony of this nonsense is that while this total rejection of morality affects scholastic sports, the games provide some insight into the fact that the sexes are very different.
     Take basketball where a high school team with a 6-2 center would likely be feared in the girls’ game but draw yawns when the boys take the court. Even the ball the girls use is significantly smaller than the one for the boys. It was a great move as it recognized some differences.
     Or take track and field. Last week, I attended the regional meet and looking at the results, the top girls’ performances would be well back in the standings for the boys. That doesn’t demean the girls or say the boys are superior.
     It does acknowledge there are fundamental biological differences that God created. The emotional differences are just as great.
     Unfortunately, it looks like those in power in Washington and their cronies want to ignore reality.
     My hope for the students, many of them athletes, is that the local school board will have the courage to stand with the many, including Gov. Matt Bevin, around the country against this politically correct nonsense.
     Common decency and morality applies to everything in life.
     Including the sports world.
     Back to that confused thoroughbred. Growing up on a farm, I learned you can alter a colt and it will change his behavior, sometimes dramatically. But it doesn’t make him a filly.