A New York Times article out this morning argues that the roiling debate over transgender athletes and female sports is in fact the product of a Republican-led culture war.
The article’s headline is “Transgender Girls in Sports: G.O.P. Pushes New Front in Culture War,” and the piece in question entirely disregards the fact that it is progressives, not conservatives, who have launched this latest salvo in the culture war.
It is left-wing activists, not conservatives, who have made it a key point in their political agenda to ensure that biological males who identify as women will be allowed to compete against female athletes. That is a culture-war provoked not by the GOP, but by progressives, who can’t seem to understand why anyone, on any part of the political spectrum, might think it unfair or unreasonable to force young women athletes to play sports on the same field as young men.
The Times article’s subheading, like the piece itself, focuses on GOP efforts to pass laws on the subject: “Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere.”
But the clash didn’t “come out of nowhere.” The bills in question are arising in state legislatures in direct response to left-wing efforts to desegregate sports by allowing men to compete against women if they identify as female. Anyone who has followed this ongoing debate is well aware that, agree or disagree with their conclusions, conservatives are playing defense on the issue, not opening a new front in the culture war.
No matter where one might fall on the issue of how best to handle athletes who don’t identify with their biological sex, we should all be able to acknowledge that this latest flashpoint in the culture war is a product of left-wing radicalism, not Republican activism.