Nobody Can Disappoint Like Family

Some version of “Nobody can disappoint like family” has probably been around for as long as humans have been forming families. It’s human nature to be disappointed when those closest to us don’t live up to expectations.
The same is true of political “families.” Had Governor Lynch signed SB263 into law, I would have been unhappy but unsurprised. That Governor Sununu signed it, disappoints.
With his signature, the governor helped to destroy the dreams of New Hampshire’s high school girl athletes. By putting his name on that very partisan bill, we join a growing list of states that allow boys to compete against girls as “girls” – no hormone treatments or surgery required.
The new law states in part:
No person shall be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination in public schools because of their age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race…
Concord Monitor’s Ethan DeWitt described the law as adding “state-level protections that effectively back up existing protections in federal law under Title IX.” But “backing up” isn’t accurate reporting. “Extending” is the more honest description because “federal Title IX law does not include protections for gender identity or sexual orientation, after the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era executive order to create them.”
What DeWitt papered over with misleading phraseology is that Obama’s change to the Title IX statute was made using a “Dear Colleague” letter dated May 13th, 2016 – well into the last year of President Obama’s second term. Timed to avoid debate or a campaign issue – or legislative concurrence – it was not something the former president felt strongly enough about to accomplish with the stroke of his pen in his first term.
But our Republican governor steps in to fill Obama’s small shoes. In doing so he has taken the athletic shoes off our girl high school competitors by forcing them to compete with boys who merely “identify” as girls. These “mind-over-matter” females will dominate girls’ sporting events with their significantly greater muscle mass and higher levels of the performance-enhancing drug, testosterone.
To see the future of girls’ high school sports, look to Connecticut. The New York Post reported “two biologically male students, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, finished first and second, respectively, in the 55-meter dash this year, crushing the competition. Miller set a new girls indoor record and also won the 300-meter. The year before, the two finished first and second in the 100-meter state outdoor championships.”
This ridiculous attempt at “inclusion” and “fairness” hurts biological girls by excluding them from trophies and college athletic scholarships through unfair competition. (And that competition is fierce: According to the NCAA, only 2 out of 100 high school athletes are awarded athletics scholarships.)
In a July 20th article at American Thinker, Maria Martinez wrote “A study of track and field athletes at Duke University…found that the world’s most elite female runners are bested by non-elite men — and even high school boys. For example, Team USA sprinter Allyson Felix has the most World Championship medals in history. But in 2018 alone, 275 high school boys ran faster than Felix’s lifetime best, on 783 separate occasions.”
Hammering home the obvious, the Duke study concluded that “testosterone is the single most important determinant of success in most competitive sports.”
The International Olympic Committee agrees. It requires athletes born male but wishing to compete in women’s sports to show their total testosterone level “has been below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months prior to competition.”
But this level is significantly higher than that found in biological women. “It is ten to 20 times higher than a cis female,” argued Alison Heather, researcher and co-author of a paper published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics. “At the moment we are really targeting inclusiveness for our trans females to compete in a female division [and] not considering a fairness issue for cis females.” (“Cis females” is today’s PC-acceptable jargon for what our grandparents simply called “women.”)
SB263 is one small, disappointing step along a path leading to a truly bad place. Today our girl athletes are disadvantaged. Tomorrow our Constitutional rights will be circumscribed in the name of inclusiveness. Just look to Canada, America’s canary-in-the-social-policy-coal-mine, to see where this “gender identity” business leads.
Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal is putting women out of business for their refusal to accommodate a male who “identifies” as female. They had provided Brazilian waxing for women. They understandably balked at serving a man-in-a-dress whose “gender identity” was at odds with his “junk.”
The legal details are too sordid for this family-oriented gazette but put “Jessica Yaniv” into your favorite search engine for the rest of the story…and a sneak preview of a possible dystopian future.

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com