Oral arguments for this week’s Supreme Court case concerning trans athletes did not seem to go well for the side advocating the inclusion of males in female sports.
“It didn’t,” says Charlie, one reason being “that the law and its meaning are clear. One has to play all manner of linguistic games and smuggle in all manner of trendy contemporary assumptions in order to get to an interpretation of the law and the Constitution that makes single-sex sports, as traditionally defined, a problem.
“You also have to have a working definition for your alternative,” Charlie points out. “And the ACLU in this case, which sent a lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, did not. Over and over again, the justices asked what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman, if not the traditional understanding. And over and over again, Kathleen Hartnett could not answer the question.”
Michael agrees, saying, “It’s kind of a hack that . . . the Founders almost couldn’t have anticipated, right? Like something like Chesterton saw a hundred years ago when he said that, ‘Truths turn into dogmas the instant they’re disputed and so everything will be disputed and everything will become a creed. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We should be left defending not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, the huge impossible universe which stares us in the face.’
“I always think of that passage when we’re contemplating the trans stuff. . . . Who could have anticipated that something a five-year-old instantly understands would be disputed by adults?”
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