Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s decisive victory over Italian Angela Carini at the Olympics on Thursday has resulted in a wave of criticism about Khelif’s eligibility as it relates to her gender identity.
Khelif won when Carini abruptly forfeited the contest after the pair exchanged only a handful of blows. Later, Carini indicated that the pain caused by Khelif’s blows made it impossible for her to continue.
“I felt a severe pain in my nose, and with the maturity of a boxer, I said ‘enough,’ because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to, I couldn’t finish the match,” Carini said after the fight.
“I am not here to judge or pass judgment,” Carini added. “If an athlete is this way, and in that sense it’s not right or it is right, it’s not up to me to decide. I just did my job as a boxer. I got into the ring and fought. I did it with my head held high and with a broken heart for not having finished the last kilometer.”
On social media, a number of Americans, including some Christian leaders, expressed outrage that the Olympics allowed Khelif to fight Carini.
“The world is at war against Nature and Nature’s God, and you are a fool if you don’t think it has entered a new stage of hostility,” said Colin Smothers, executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).
“The feelings of weak men now mean more than the safety of REAL women,” said worship leader and right wing activist Sean Feucht. “This is sick. This is demonic. The Olympic committee and every democrat politician supporting this should be called out.”
“Your conscience should be telling you that it’s wrong for a man to beat up a woman,” said Denny Burk, president of CBMW and professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Don’t ignore or suppress your conscience on this. It’s telling you the truth, even if the International Olympic Committee says otherwise.”
Referencing the Olympics’ controversial Opening Ceremony, which featured a drag parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” Mike Cosper of Christianity Today said that “the revaluation of values dramatized in the opening ceremonies has real-world consequences. In this case, today, a biological male breaks a female athlete’s nose in competition and is rewarded for it by advancing to the next round.”
“Think about it. In the name of sport, we’re rewarding violence by men against women. We’re setting a standard that will almost surely, in many categories, [crowds] biological women out of the games,” Cosper said. “It’s not just about blasphemy and respecting sacred symbols. It’s about culture and civilization and norms that safeguard women and children.”
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“Men are beating up women and they’ll be rewarded with Olympic medals. It makes me sick,” said Christian blogger Samuel Sey. “This is what LGBT ideology does to society. Feminists don’t care, but it ultimately protects depraved men and punishes women.”
