The Patriot Post® · New Science a Game Changer on Trans Sports
One of the very first things Joe Biden has promised to do as president is abolish girls’ sports. It’s a ludicrous thing to make a priority, but the former Obama VP insists — like most liberals — that “transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.” It’s the fair thing to do, Biden argues. But is it? New research in the British Journal of Sports Medicine says no.
It’s been one of the fiercest debates of the last year — erupting in boxing rings, Olympic committees, even high school tracks. Should biological boys be allowed to compete against girls in the name of inclusion? People across the political spectrum have agreed: they should not. In an unlikely coalition, outspoken LGBT activists have joined forces with soccer moms and conservatives to fight for the right to keep competition on a level playing field. Groups like Save Women’s Sports popped up, working in state legislatures like Idaho to keep the two genders separate. “We strongly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to compete, but true athletic parity for women demands that women’s sports be protected for biological females.”
The science, it turns out, supports them. In a study that even NBC felt compelled to cover, Dr. Timothy Roberts found that men undergoing a female transition still have a competitive biological edge. “At one year,” which has been the typical cutoff for organizations like the Olympic committee, “the trans women on average still have an advantage…” he said. Roberts made these discoveries studying Air Force servicemen and women who were in the process of transitioning. After several months of hormones and other treatment, the men in transition were still able to do more push-ups and run faster than their female counterparts.
Obviously, Roberts pointed out, being in the military isn’t exactly the same as being in the Olympics, but “it’s a comparable situation, where you have someone doing whatever they can to maintain or improve their abilities.” Naturally, other doctors and researchers felt compelled to pooh-pooh the study to NBC, arguing that it has limitations that we shouldn’t apply to the debate over girls’ sports. But the reality is, doctors like Michelle Cretella have been saying for years, men and women are profoundly and genetically different in ways that no medicine or surgery can change.
“[M]en and women have — at a minimum — 6,500 genetic differences between us. And this impacts every cell of our bodies — our organ systems, how diseases manifest, how we diagnose, and even treat in some cases.” And yet, the NCAA has joined the radical International Olympic Committee in downplaying those disparities. Fortunately, most Americans can see through the political correctness to common sense. In polling late last year in 10 battleground states, 75 percent of voters said they object to mixed-gender sports. “I think we’ve made some progress in [warning the country about] what’s happening. And I think it’s so common sense and basic for people that they’re kind of wondering, ‘Why are we even having this discussion right now?’” Concerned Women for America’s Doreen Denny said on “Washington Watch.”
But we’re having this discussion because of radical liberals like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — two people who will do anything to tear down the walls of science, morality, and human history if they have the chance. And it will be up to us — and the brave voices fighting for truth — to stand up and speak out.
Originally published here.
Hypocrisy: D.C.‘s Default Bowser
For months, Democrats have been the riot party — the tear-down-statues, vandalize-memorials, loot-small-businesses, and burn-everything-else voice in America. In Washington, D.C. in June, fires blazed up and down the National Mall, and what was the liberal mayor’s response? To send our national guardsmen packing. Now, six months later, the president’s supporters are coming to town. And what is Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) response? Send back-up!
The hypocrisy isn’t a surprise — not after a full year of Democratic officials standing by while their cities smoldered in the name of “free assembly.” Vandals and criminals “bashed through windows,” shattering glass along the streets of D.C., and destroying businesses — large and small alike. The city, Bowser said at the time, was prepared for “multiple days of demonstration.” But in the end, no one was prepared for the chaos in America’s capital city, as her administration stood by and watched the devastation happen.
At the time, even some Democratic sympathizers were surprised. In places like the Chicago Tribune, people lamented the silent encouragement of so many state and local officials. “If gay people were pouring into bars and punching straight people, I as a gay man would speak out,” Albert Eisenberg wrote. “[W]hen violence has come from the conservative side, I don’t hesitate to stand against it. But it’s not. There have been no right-wing groups storming campuses and flinging feces at speakers we don’t like; no tea party mobs destroying property, assaulting police officers, and paralyzing our major cities; and no Republican senators calling their colleagues murderers just weeks after a political assassination attempt. From Portland to New Haven to Washington, the violence we’re witnessing is largely a product of the hard Left, and the reaction from mainstream liberals — mostly silence, dismissiveness, equivocation — means it will continue to flourish.”
Flourish it did, even as Mayor Bowser resolutely — and inexplicably — kicked out hundreds of Utah Army National Guardsmen from D.C. With so little warning that it caught Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy by surprise, the troops were told to “pack up and leave their hotel rooms” in downtown Washington immediately. Mayor Bowser thought their presence was an unwelcome presence while violence gripped the city.
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) was shocked. “Just heard that Mayor Bowser is kicking the Utah National Guard out of all DC hotels tomorrow. More than 1200 troops from 10 states are being evicted. This is unacceptable,” he tweeted. Fact checkers raced to cover for the liberal leader, insisting to Americans that Bowser wasn’t responsible for the move — which was hilarious, since she herself bragged about the decision on Twitter. “Senator — until they are recalled home — which I have formally requested from the President, your troops are in D.C. hotels. However, D.C. residents cannot pay their hotel bills. The Army can clear that up with the hotel today, and we are willing to help.”
Fast-forward six months, as Americans stream into town to pray and march to the capital in peaceful protest of the election certification. Bowser’s response is apoplectic. She’s asked for 340 D.C. National Guard troops and traffic control points all across the city. Then, stoking panic about a movement whose only crime before the wild November clash has been burning a couple of Black Lives Matters flags (not tormenting an entire metropolitan area), she warns that a grave threat has come to the capital. Conservatives. “I am asking Washingtonians and those who live in the region to stay out of the downtown area on Tuesday and Wednesday and not to engage with demonstrators who come to our city seeking confrontation. We will do what we must to ensure all who attend remain peaceful,” Bowser said. “We will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents, or cause destruction in our city.”
Actually, history shows, she will. It just depends whose side you’re on.
Originally published here.
Facebook CEO Uses Fortune to Zuckerpunch Voters
If the U.S. government were hiring a company to run our elections, Facebook is the last place most of us would turn. For starters, they haven’t proven they support free speech — let alone free elections. Then there’s the inherent bias. Just last November, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted under oath that his “employee base skews Left-leaning.” So the idea that America would hand over the keys to the 2020 election to him — or any other Big Tech mogul — is horrifying. But, the money trail shows, that’s exactly what 2,500 local jurisdictions did. And now, the entire nation is paying for it.
Zuckerberg and his wife said they just wanted to help. With the country pounded by coronavirus and congressional talks at a standstill, the Facebook titan offered to chip in his own money to help keep the elections on track. Using a nonprofit, the Center for Technology and Civic Life, as a screen, the power couple started funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to local elections offices to help “[deal] with the difficulties of adapting to new voting behavior” during the pandemic.
By the time the election rolled around, a whopping one-fifth of the country’s election administrations had taken a piece of Zuckerberg’s pie. Liberals heralded his generosity. Conservatives sounded the alarm. Turns out, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) was no ordinary charity. It was founded by former Democratic aides and staffed and funded by some of the most extreme leftists in the country, people like David Plouffe — Barack Obama’s campaign manager. Digging deeper, Republicans became even more concerned. It seemed that the biggest pots of CTCL’s money were being channeled to deep blue states and urban battleground areas, places where Democrats needed to make the biggest hay. Suddenly, it became clear: these philanthropists coming to the rescue of democracy were quietly subverting it.
Zuckerberg’s operation was deciding how many poll places should be open, hiring the people who count the vote — and paying them — setting up new drop boxes, and sending activists-turned-election officials into neighborhoods to collect ballots. In other words, Thomas More Society’s Phill Kline said, “We had a shadow government managing these elections, particularly in the urban core. They set up these procedures that allowed for the breach of the chain of custody of the ballots and the infusion of fraudulent ballots.”
And most local election officials had no idea. Desperate for money to keep their operations afloat, they applied for grants, never realizing who the puppet master pulling the strings was. Frank Byrd, a clerk in Jackson County, Illinois, told Vox he wasn’t even aware of Zuckerberg’s involvement. “When you get money,” Byrd said, “you always try to tell yourself, 'It’s all good.’” But it wasn’t all good — a fact that a growing number of conservative officials realized. State attorneys general like Jeff Landry (R) went on a full-scale attack to stop Louisiana from taking the money. Other states started doing the same. Within weeks, Republicans had filed lawsuits in nine states to stop the “donations” from meddling with local processes.
But in some places, it was too late. Zuckerberg’s influence was already paying off. Cities like Philadelphia, which raked in $8 million in election grants, were more emboldened than ever. In videos that went viral, officials were kicking Republican poll watchers out of headquarters. “Is this no longer a public place?” one asked, “because it’s being funded by a nonprofit?”
Back in December, J. Christian Adams was on “Washington Watch” called the whole plot “diabolical.” “[People] need to worry about [this], because the Center for Technology and Civic Life transformed city election offices” in places like “Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and all over the country to build in structural bias. To make the system work differently. To help one side. And that’s the real story of this election — the dismantling of state laws and the building of structural bias through billionaires, who gave a half-billion dollars to that effort.”
Look, he explained, “this plan was being cooked up in March by Left-wing groups,” right when the coronavirus hit and gave them a smokescreen. Adams started combing through the law, looking for proof that financing elections was illegal. It turns out, he shook his head, there aren’t any. But the real question is, why would anyone give millions of dollars to the government to run their offices? Simple. They’ve “devised a scheme where rich leftist billionaires can redo how elections are run.” In Philadelphia, they doubled the budget to send people door to door in Philadelphia, knocking on doors to collect ballots. “They hired street activists to become city election officials and then go into neighborhoods to collect ballots.” And they did it under the auspices of an official capacity.
Kline, for his part, thinks there’s a major legal fight to be waged here. This is “an insidious, coordinated, and stealth campaign to manipulate this year’s elections,” he warned. And he believes it violates federal law, since these cities created their own election plans contrary to the state’s system. It’s “lawlessness,” plain and simple. “This is like the elections brought to you by Coca-Cola or the National Rifle Association — except it’s Mark Zuckerberg.” It’s unprecedented. And it’s part of the reason leaders like Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) cannot, in good conscience, vote to certify this election. How can I, the Missouri senator argued, “without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden?”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.