Things are cranking up in Congress, pending the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday. Bills are moving through the process, with the apparent purpose being to ensure that President Trump won’t grow bored during his first few days in office.
One of the bills is the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” which has passed the House of Representatives with a bi-partisan vote — two Democrats voted for the bill.
Sorry, Dems, but that’s what bipartisan means.
Two House Democrats have voted alongside Republican lawmakers to ban athletes born male from participating on girls’ school sports teams.
The Protection of Women and Girls In Sports Act, led by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., would amend federal law to specify that student athletes must participate in school sports teams that coincide with their gender at birth.
Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Vicente Gonzales, D-Texas, were the lone Democrats to vote for the bill when it passed 218 to 206. Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., voted “present.”
All three won re-election on razor-thin margins in districts that have trended redder over the years.
Quibble: “Gender” is a linguistic term; the operative term here is “sex,” and it is not “assigned” or even determined at birth but rather is determined genetically at conception. And, yes, unlike a certain Supreme Court justice I could name, I am a biologist by education.
With that said: Note where those two Democrats are from. Texas, fever dreams of liberals, Democrats, and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) aside, is not turning blue. I’d prefer to think that Rep. Cuellar and Rep. Gonzales are voting for this bill out of sincere principles, but it’s also very likely that their continued political survival is at stake.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where, hopefully, it will see similar success.
Senate Republicans have already signaled they are aiming to take up the bill soon.
With a bit of luck, the bill will be awaiting President Trump’s signature on Monday. May it be one of many; the last four years have been a massive exercise in nitwittery and incompetence in the White House, and there’s a lot of fixing to be done.
See Related: JK Rowling Shuts Down John Oliver for Defending Trans-Identified Males in Women’s Sports
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Here’s the vote count:
But here’s the real question: Why was this bill even necessary?
We’ve been around and around this issue, as a nation, and as a culture. There are certain facts involved that are irrefutable and undeniable; men and boys have, from the beginning, physical advantages over women and girls. Those are advantages in speed, strength, stamina, and the ability to function through external hardships. These are facts, and it’s baffling that we are in a place where there is a need for Congress to codify in law that boys are boys and girls are girls and that school sports must be distinguished accordingly; otherwise, there never would have been any need for sports to be segregated by sex in the first place.
This is the pass we’ve come to. My father, who in World War 2 was a second lieutenant and a bomber navigator, used to joke that it took an act of Congress to make him a gentleman. Now, it seems it takes an act of Congress to recognize that boys are boys and girls are girls.
