After the NCAA Board of Governors released a statement supporting transgender athletes, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized it as “utterly insane” and as “brutality,” not equality.
Monday’s policy statement from the NCAA, which oversees collegiate athletics, allows transgender women to compete in women’s sports as long as they undergo testosterone suppression treatment. This “more inclusive” stance, says the NCAA, permits “inclusion and fairness [to] coexist for all student-athletes, including transgender athletes, at all levels of sports.”
NCAA Decision May Affect Host Sites
Though the NCAA didn’t mention the current debate in some states to ban transgender athletes, it indicated it’s keeping an eye on the situation. “When determining where championships are held, NCAA policy directs that only locations where hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination should be selected,” said the statement. “We will continue to closely monitor these situations to determine whether NCAA championships can be conducted in ways that are welcoming and respectful of all participants.”
Bans on transgender athletes have been enacted by four states so far, and South Dakota’s governor recently signed executive orders. The ACLU says almost 30 states are considering similar legislation, which seeks to avoid giving transgender athletes unfair advantages against other competitors.
Transgender advocates applauded the NCAA’s move. “The harm [of transgender bans] is real and is felt very personally by transgender kids just trying to live their lives as who they really are,” says Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “The NCAA…board should hold those states passing these harmful laws accountable.”
After Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson recently vetoed a transgender-athlete ban, Walmart heir Tom Walton expressed support, calling the ban a “discriminatory policy…that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities.”
James Dobson: ‘Biological Men’ Will Push Women off the Field
Dobson refutes the notion that the NCAA policy is nondiscriminatory and fair. “The NCAA’s stance was one of complete surrender,” he says. “Rather than standing up for women and girls, who fought for decades to obtain equal opportunities in athletics and education, the NCAA is falling for the lie that ‘inclusion’ and ‘fairness’ require allowing men to compete against women. This defies our God-given basics of biology and is utterly insane!”
The policy, says Dobson, will allow “biological men…to take the field in women’s sports, even if that means pushing women off the field.” He adds, “The NCAA and its leftist backers would call this progress and equality. I call it what it is: brutality!”
Dobson condemns the NCAA for “using its bully pulpit to further this dangerous and unethical ideology.” The psychologist and commentator urges Christians and “rational-minding Americans, who support women and girls, [and] are unwilling to fund, consume or otherwise approve of this nonsense,” to contact the NCAA board of governors, local colleges, and elected officials.
While covering the transgender-ban trend last year, Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter wrote, “Many Americans are finally beginning to realize—perhaps too late—that transgender ideology primarily benefits men at the expense of women.” Soon, he added, “We’ll know who has won the race for public opinion. And then we’ll know if women athletes—and reality—have lost out once again.”
