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“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.
Title IX has led to an incredible number of opportunities for women and girls to participate in athletic teams in a meaningful way. All over the country, schools and colleges have been creating teams for women and girls to participate in athletics.
An outstanding example of this is the women’s basketball team operated by the University of Iowa and the star participant, Caitlin Clark. As good as she is, Caitlin Clark would stand no chance of playing on a men’s professional basketball team.
In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome. This is the science.
So then, each one of us has been biologically programed to be male or female. The difference of one chromosome out of 46 determines if you are born male or female.
The West Virginia law, originally known as the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” required that athletes’ participation in school-sanctioned events be determined based on their biological sex as indicated on their original birth certificates. This effectively barred transgender students from participating in girls’ sports teams. However, the court ruled that this law could not lawfully be applied to a 13-year-old “boy” who had been taking puberty-blocking medication and publicly identified as a girl since the third grade.
As with so many things of settled science, there are many people who are dissatisfied and want to ignore science in order to obtain their own goals.
It appears that the U.S. Court of appeals for the 4th Circuit believes that biological girls and transgender “girls” are exactly the same. The court ruled on Tuesday April 16 that the 13-year-old person, born with male chromosomes, may participate on the local school girls’ cross-country team. Despite the fact of his birth as a male, this person has been undergoing a series of puberty-blocking hormones. The Court of Appeals found that the West Virginia law deprives this individual of any “meaningful” athletic opportunities. Two judges participated in this decision, one an Obama appointee and the other a Biden appointee.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, April 18 that this transgender girl may compete on the girls’ cross country and track teams at her middle school in West Virginia while her appeal moved forward, signaling that a majority of the justices are not ready to enter another battleground in the culture wars.
The Supreme Court’s brief order, which let stand an appeals court’s temporary injunction, gave no reasons, which is not unusual when the justices rule on emergency applications filed on what critics call the court’s shadow docket.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a dissenting opinion indicating that states are entitled to enact laws “restricting participation in women’s or girls’ sports based on genes or physiological or anatomical characteristics.”
The case, involving conflicting conceptions of inclusiveness and fairness in sports, arose from a 2021 law in West Virginia that barred boys from competing on girls’ teams in public schools. The law made distinctions based on what it called “biological sex,” which it defined as “an individual’s physical form as a male or female based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
We seem to be living in a “Brave New World” in which we can recreate humans to any specifications we want, no longer in the “image of God.”
Mike Lang, Chairman, Union County Republican Central Committee