Cal Thomas: Splitting the Difference, or Just Splitting?

The Biden administration has proposed new regulations under Title IX to address transgender athletes who want to play on women’s sports teams. Title IX is a law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance, and now it will partially protect transgender athletes who participate in previously all-women teams.

The proposed regulations narrow the scope of when discrimination of trans athletes would be permitted, but they also offer guidelines for when schools could bar their participation. As per the regulations, males who have not reached puberty can play with girls, and older children who have reached puberty could be separated into traditional all-male or all-female teams.

However, under the proposal, biology alone won’t be enough to justify separation of the sexes. Schools would need to consider other factors before banning males from female teams and the reverse, including basing their decisions on education grounds and the need for fairness. Schools would also need to face the challenge of locker rooms and showers.

Recently, six Republican senators sent a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona seeking answers about his department’s intention to include “gender identity” as a protected category under Title IX.

People who disagree that transgender athletes should be allowed to play women’s sports will see this latest battle over gender identity as another sign of moral decline. They see secular progressives as always getting their way while always having to defend themselves against charges they are bigots or various types of “- phobes.”

A Gallup poll taken last year found that a record high 50 percent of Americans rate the overall state of moral values in the U.S. as “poor,” and another 37 percent say it is only “fair.” When norms are no longer standards for a nation, it is evidence of decline.

Facebook recently introduced 58 “gender options” and three preferred pronouns which one can select, regardless of whether they conform to biology. If someone disapproves, on what basis will they object?

As G.K. Chesterton said, “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions,” and the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen has spoken similarly, stating, “America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance–it is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos.”

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