Will You Comply?

By: Lisa Van Houten

As adults refuse to protect the rights and safety of girls – I’m looking at you Joe Biden, the NCAA, educators, coaches, and even parents – five brave middle school girls stood up for themselves against the transgender tyranny sweeping our nation.

Perhaps you saw the recent story of these middle school girls from West Virginia who refused to compete against a boy, who “identifies” as a girl, in the shot put at a track and field meet.  The girls staged their silent and peaceful protest by stepping into the ring and stepping out, without throwing the shot.  As schools once taught, there are vast biological differences between males and females in muscle mass, lung capacity, length of limbs, etc..  In addition, in girls’ shot put, the shot is several pounds lighter than what the boys’ team throws.  So, it’s not surprising that this boy ended up winning the competition by three feet – a much greater difference than typical– at least when competition is truly separated by sex.

Now, their school district, the Harrison County Board of Education, has banned these young girls from future competitions – they’re being punished because they took a stand on behalf of reality and against transgender insanity.

This is just one example of what will be the many ramifications for girls all across the nation when Biden’s unconstitutional overhaul of Title IX takes effect on August 1.  Last month the Biden administration ripped away over fifty years of protections for girls, which had given them an equal playing field – both on the sports field and in educational opportunities – and instead handed their civil rights to boys identifying as transgender.

Title IX is a civil rights law passed by Congress in 1972, consisting of only 37 straight-forward words: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, [emphasis added] be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Title IX was created to protect opportunities for girls and women by prohibiting discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funding – from early childhood education all the way up to higher education.  In other words, if a school offers sports or educational opportunities for boys, they must offer the same for girls.

However, the Biden administration has turned Title IX on its head, stripping away these protections from girls by redefining the term “sex” to include “gender identity.”  The Left continues to try to force Americans to deny biological facts.  One’s sex, or gender, is immutable – unchangeable.  Every cell in our body reveals whether we are male or female.  One’s sex/gender is not subjective or determined by “feelings.”   And the vast majority of Americans agree, as the Washington Post had to admit when polling showed: “Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth.”

Yet that didn’t stop the Biden administration from adding 1,577 pages of regulations to those original 37 words to egregiously expand Title IX to include a prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity – forcing every public school and university, and many private schools and colleges, to comply with their edict or lose federal funding.

Now schools, from kindergarten on up, will be forced to allow boys and men in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms – putting not only their modesty, but their very safety at risk.  Every overnight school activity or college dorm will have to allow boys to sleep in spaces designated for girls. Every girls sports team will have to let boys participate – stealing awards and scholarships, and putting girls at greater risk for injury. Recently, we wrote of such ramifications which are already occurring.  As conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey stated: “No more teams or facilities just for women.  There are only male spaces and there are co-ed spaces.  What a scary, scary world for girls.”  And it’s Republicans who are accused of “waging war” against women.

Not only is Biden’s Title IX mandate erasing the educational and athletic opportunities girls have had for the last 50 years, but also included in those 1,577 pages are reams of other infringements upon freedom and parental rights.  Under this unlawful decree, teachers, school employees, and students lose their freedom of speech, forced to say what isn’t true or face discipline.  Using the “wrong” pronoun or “mis-gendering” someone will now be considered a “sex-based harassment” – a federal civil rights violation subject to investigation and punishment.  Compelled speech is not free speech.

Also under attack are parental rights.  With this re-write of Title IX, schools will be even more empowered to hide the gender confusion of children from their parents.  As the Federalist explains: “Under these parental-exclusion policies, when a child decides to embrace a new name, identity, and set of pronouns, school staff swiftly craft ‘gender support plans’ that codify the child’s new identity and determine the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sleeping arrangements for overnight trips the child will use. The child determines if school staff should actively hide the new name and identity from the parents, uniting the entire school community against the parents as the school secretly shoves the child down a dangerous path of social and likely irreversible and harmful medical transition.”

In addition, currently under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents have the right to access their child’s education records.  However, Biden’s new Title IX explicitly states that “requirements of Title IX override any conflicting FERPA provisions.”

Equally concerning, parents could be the target of an investigation if they don’t affirm their child’s transgender identity.  We’ve already seen cases of parents losing custody of their children for refusing to go along with transgender ideology; under this new Title IX, schools will be tasked with investigating behavior that creates a “hostile environment” regarding the above-mentioned “harassment” – both in and out of school. As the decree states, “even when some conduct alleged to be contributing to the hostile environment occurred outside [emphasis added] the recipient’s education program or activity.”

Thankfully, numbers of conservative states and organizations are already filing lawsuits against this unlawful revision of Title IX and directing their state’s schools to ignore Biden’s decree. Governor Ron DeSantis once again stood up to such tyranny, posting a video message to Joe Biden, stating: “We will not comply.”  This is what every single Republican governor should do.  The executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to create new laws.  Yet the Biden administration is once again ignoring the Constitution and usurping the jurisdiction of the legislative branch.

But the fight doesn’t belong just to Republican governors; in this compelling piece, writer Joel Abbott reminds us that we can’t sit back as the transgender cult transforms our nation.  “If reality, decency, and virtue are going to win the day against the cult leaders and their useful idiots, we are going to need to wake up to the reality that there are actually things on God’s green earth that are worth the fight and steel ourselves for the war ahead.”

We can no longer just live and let live.  We need to stand.  We need to act.  Start by contacting the reprehensible Harrison Country school board members responsible for banning those courageous West Virginian middle school girls from future track and field competitions because THEY took a stand for what was right.

Then take a stand yourself.  Run for school board or city council. Attend meetings; speak out.  We need more fathers like this one.  Partly, the reason for the decay of our country is because too many Christians have abdicated the command to be salt and light.   As Joel Abbott also admonishes: “When we stand before God, we cannot say that we were too scared to act, or that virtue was not convenient at the time.”

Remember, God delights in using the weak to confound the mighty.  (I Corinthians 1:27)

 

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