by Stephen Scaer
My name is Stephen Scaer, I live in Nashua NH, and I urge you to vote Inexpedient to Legislate on SB 263 which would allow boys who identify as girls to sue their school districts if they don’t get a spot on a girls’ sports team.
Related: SB263 –NH Schools to Allow Biological Boys to Compete in Girls Sports?
As a high school teacher and as a father who has raised two daughters who loved school sports, I believe this will have a negative impact on girls throughout the state.
Recently, Connecticut runner Selina Soule was beaten by two muscular young men in a high-school championship, missing out for a chance to compete before college coaches. “We all know the outcome of the race before it starts; it’s demoralizing,” she said of having to compete against boys. She is joined in her pleas for fairness by feminist athlete Martina Navratilova, former gymnast Gabby Logan, and ex-Olympic swimmer Sharron Davis.
The feminist group, Women’s Liberation Front, is fighting transgender legislation because it will erase all of their hard-won rights and protections, including Title IX and private spaces for women, by making them available to men who claim to be women.
These laws have repercussions for educators, too. Indiana school teacher John Kluge was forced to resign because he refused to supervise a naked girl in a boys’ locker room. Teachers in Indiana and Virginia have been fired for refusing to use pronouns that did not correspond with biological reality. Laws such as SB 263 send the message that faithful Christians, or anyone who respects the biological difference between boys and girls, need not apply at public schools.
Gender ideology is hardly settled science, and we should be careful about passing laws that promote it among teenagers. There’s no shortage of YouTube videos of young people detransitioning, and detailing the trauma and the permanently damaging medical procedures they suffered because of misguided adults.
We have long discriminated between men and women to protect women’s rights by providing separate sports teams and facilities. This bill would force us to abandon objective and important differences in sex, and instead discriminate based on what people claim themselves to be. It’s not fair to force girls to compete against boys. I urge you to vote ITL on SB 263.
