Knowing Your Place

On Monday I wrote about a preachers who wanted women to wear dresses well not another wants to ban women and girls from playing sports!

Now rightwing Christians don’t want girls to play sports at all

"Are they out there wearing dresses and skirts while they're playing sports? Are they learning to be a feminine woman?"
LGBTQ Nation
By Daniel Villarreal
August 29, 2022


It turns out that some far-right Christians aren’t just opposed to transgender girls playing on sports teams, they’re opposed to any girls playing sports at all… and that opposition may have landed one Christian school in legal trouble.

Valley Christian Academy (VCA) in Santa Maria, California recently forfeited its scheduled October 29 football game against nearby Coast Union High School (CUHS) after discovering that CUHS had two girls on its team.

While it might seem strange that females should be allowed to play on sports teams that are predominantly male, it’s actually required under Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in sports within any schools that receive federal government funding. Title IX states that, in sports where a girls’ team is not available, girls must be allowed to try out for the boys’ team and participate on the same basis as boys.

[…]

When VCA canceled its game against CVHS last year, it sent a letter to the school stating that its female athlete wouldn’t be allowed to compete on the VCA campus. That letter may have violated Title IX. The letter may have also violated the California Interscholastic Federation’s (CIF) rules requiring schools to comply with Title IX.

So in other words… “Religious Freedom!” you are prohibiting me from practicing my religion! How dare you we should be able to ignore laws and discriminate! Just give us federal and state education funds! Or we will sue!!!!

Oh by the way we don’t want them to wear pants!

“Are they out there wearing dresses and skirts while they’re playing sports? Are they learning to be a feminine woman?” Furrh asked in a recent sermon. “No, that’s not what sports do for women…. . My daughters are not going to be in any organized sports team.”

For the record, female field hockey players do actually wear skirts, but that doesn’t matter because — as with Christian misogyny in general — fundamentalist opposition to female athletes isn’t really about preserving “femininity.” It’s about controlling girls’ bodies, freedoms, and life choices.

Oh by the way, the pastor also said,

Tanner Furrh of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Watauga, Texas — a man who has said that lesbians deserve violent deaths — recently said that he is against girls playing any organized sports because sports cause girls to be “more masculine.”

These people are a throwback to the 1950s; the Blacks knew their place, the gays knew their place in the closet, immigrants knew their place as servants, and the wives were pregnant, bare foot, and in the kitchen.

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The Children’s Hospital of Boston came under more attacks and some of them have crossed the line.

Children’s hospitals become targets of anti-transgender attacks and harassment

NPR

By Stephanie Sy

August 31, 2022

In recent weeks, several children’s hospitals have become targets of far-right attacks and harassment. Anti-transgender activists have been using social media to spread disinformation about gender-affirming medical care. Jay Brown of the Human Rights Campaign joins Stephanie Sy to discuss violent threats made against the staff at Boston Children's Hospital.

Judy Woodruff:

In recent weeks, several children's hospitals have become targets of far right attacks and harassment over gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth.

Stephanie Sy has the story.

Stephanie Sy:

Extremist anti-transgender activists have been using social media to spread disinformation about gender-affirming care, and now the staff at Boston Children's Hospital is receiving violent threats.

The hospital is one of dozens of facilities that offer trans health care. They become the target of far right influencers and politicians who want to ban these services outright. Despite what one Twitter account with more than a million followers posted, Boston Children's says it does not perform genital surgeries as part of gender-affirming care on patients under the age of 18.

For more on all of this, I'm joined by Jay Brown. He's the senior vice president of programs, research and training at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

Jay Brown, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour."

What was your reaction to hearing about the threats to Boston Children's Hospital? And what's your sense of how prevalent this hate-mongering is around this issue?

Jay Brown, Human Rights Campaign:

Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me.

And I wish I could say I was surprised by this. But, unfortunately, we have seen a real rise in this kind of extremism. And this is really just the latest in a well-coordinated effort to divide people and turn people against their LGBTQ neighbors and friends.

[…]

Jay Brown:

Yes, we're really worried about what this means for folks' daily lives.

We're already seeing Proud Boys and other extremists show up at events, Pride parades, at library story hours. And these providers have real reason for concern. We see really hardworking, well-trained medical professionals just doing the job that they are called to do, to follow their ethical duties, and seeing these extremists really mobilize against them, it's very concerning.

They don’t care who they hurt, they are being driven to fear and hate people who are different just like the Fascist parties did in Germany and Italy back in the 1930s. A political party to rally hate against minorities.

There is only one way to stop them… VOTE! Vote them out of office, we can do it! We can override their gerrymandering by getting the vote out! We can saturate the barriers to voting that the Republicans put in place! Vote! Vote! Vote like your life depends upon it because it does.