The debate over whether transgender women — biological men who live as women — is heating up as lawmakers in state after state are considering laws to protect female athletes in high school and college from competing against male athletes who claim to be transgender women.
Two bills in the Ohio Statehouse would require students participating in sports to be female for female sports, males for male sports, or co-ed teams would be permitted.
Those who support the bills say the law is necessary to protect female athletes in high school and college from discrimination protections based on sex under the federal Title IX statute.
Opponents claim the law would discriminate against individuals living as the opposite sex and want to join teams that match their “gender identity.”
As Breitbart News has reported, many across the country support a law to protect women’s sports — including many elite female athletes and feminists.
The Ohio-based Columbus Dispatch wrote a lengthy feature on the debate going on in that state:
What motivates the women sponsoring House Bill 61 and Senate Bill 132 is a sense of fairness. Both Rep. Jena Powell, R-Arcanum, and Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, believe transgender girls have unfair advantages when it comes to sports.
And the proof of those advantages is all around us, said Roegner, who was herself a college athlete. \Ohio’s statewide record for the boy’s 100-meter dash is 10.38 seconds. The world record for the women’s 100-meter dash (set by U.S. Olympian Florence Griffith-Joyner) is 10.49 seconds.
And Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps can simply be born with biological differences that contribute to their record-setting stats. Phelps’ wingspan is longer than it should be for a man his height, his ankles are double-jointed and his body produces 50% less lactic acid (the hormone that makes your muscles feel tired) than the average human.
“Biological males possess many physiological advantages over females, including greater lung capacity, larger hearts, higher red blood cell counts, stronger tendons and ligaments, greater muscle strength, and increased bone density,” Powell said during her testimony on House Bill 61.
“That opportunity is being ripped away from them by biological males,” Powell said.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the International Olympic Committee currently allow athletes to play on the team they want if they undergo hormone therapy and testing.
The Dispatch story notes that the Ohio High School Athletic Association sets the rules for high school sports. In 2014 it voted to permit transgender women to compete against biological women if they could show “sound medical evidence that she does not possess physical (bone structure, muscle mass, testosterone, hormonal, etc.) or physiological advantages over genetic females of the same age group.”
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com
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