Proposed Washington State Law Would Prevent Transgender Athletes from Competing Against Girls

Transgender
Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News via AP

The Washington State legislature will soon debate a bill that would restrict school sports athletes to participating only in the gender category of their birth.

The bill (House Bill 2201), filed by 8th District Republican Bill Klippert, would prevent biological males who claim to be transgender females from competing against natural-born female athletes in the state’s schools.

Klippert subtitled his bill, “Ensuring equitable competition between students who participate in school athletic activities.”

According to CBS affiliate KEPR, Klippert is filing the bill because “It has been brought to my attention on multiple occasions by constituents, athletes whose first gender was male are competing against females and in dominating sports.”

Klippert adds that his bill is meant to ensure women’s rights and maintain fundamental fairness.

“I’m running this in support of female athletes, so they can compete against each other and not have to compete against male athletes who have different hormones flowing through their veins, which gives them much more muscle capacity,” Klippert said of his bill.

PFLAG, a radical LGBTQ activist group, though, insisted that the bill is “at its core an attempt to invalidate transgender and gender non-binary identity” despite that Rep. Klippert noted that the purpose of the bill is to safeguard women’s rights.

The radical activist group also claimed that Klippert is somehow trying to devalue the humanity of transgender people.

“We stand in firm opposition to this bill, and any other proposed law of this type,” PFLAG said. “Transgender people are people, non-binary people are people, they are entitled to a recognition of who they are and to have their civil rights and basic dignity honored.”

It is doubtful that Klippert’s bill will include any such language that transgenders are not “people,” or that they somehow don’t deserve to be treated with “basic dignity.”

The group Save Women’s Sports applauded Klippert’s upcoming bill.

“Biology does not lie. Those who identify as being ‘transgender women’ are biological males, and no amount of medical intervention can change that. Their inclusion in female sports is not fair,” the group said in its press release on the bill’s filing.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

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