Ohio Republican legislators passed a bill late Wednesday night banning trans girls from high school and college athletics that “comes with a ‘verification process’ of checking the genitals of those ‘accused’ of being trans,” a Cleveland TV station reported on Friday, June 3, 2022 (see story here).
The provision was a surprise tack-on to a more innocuous schools bill that — by design — Democratic legislators weren’t allowed to even see until the next day.
The legislative policy director for Equality Ohio, a group representing LGBQT people, said, “I know that there are a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community who are sitting there asking themselves, ‘What did I do to them? because they keep coming after me’ and I can’t blame them for having that perspective. But the answer is nothing, just existing’,” which is an accurate description of the GOP’s hate-fueled all-out assault against gay and trans people in this election year.
The sponsor, GOP state Rep. Jena Powell, claims, “Across our country, female athletes are currently losing championships, scholarship opportunities, medals, education and training opportunities and more to discriminatory policies that allow biological males to compete in girls sports.”
That’s a blatant lie. In three states put together where GOP legislatures have fallen over themselves to ban trans youth from girls’ sports, a grand total of one trans person plays girls’ sports (see article here). In Ohio, the TV station notes, there’s “only one transgender girl … currently participating in high school athletics,” who plays on a softball team. Wow, what a threat to the girls on the team (sarcasm).
The story adds there hasn’t been more than one trans athlete in any of the last 7 years since Ohio enacted a transgender athletics policy. Clearly, this is a non-issue, or at most a miniscule issue. These laws largely symbolic. But symbolism is important, and Republicans cross the country are incorporating it into their hate campaigns against LGBQT people.
Who is Jena Powell? She’s 29 years old, from an Ohio farming family, and is an outspoken anti-masker (photo above, bio here). I gather she’s out to make a splash and draw attention to herself at the expense of LGBQT people. But as a graduate from Liberty University (profile here), an incubator for rightwing religious politics, I don’t doubt she’s also a genuine dyed-in-the-wool bigot.
Democratic state Rep. Rich Brown said, “This is a made-up, ‘let’s feed red meat to the base’ issue.” He’s right about that. With only one trans girl playing high school sports in all of Ohio, on a softball team, it’s all about stirring up the rubes. I wrote in a post yesterday (here) that Republicans avoid debating real issues because they have nothing to offer voters. This is another example of that.
GOP state Rep. Jeanne Schmidt also weighed in. She said she’s “very passionate about this issue because of her running career.” The TV station’s story says she used her speaking time during debate “to talk about how, one time, she placed second in a track meet. She did not lose to a transgender woman.” Schmidt, you may recall, was 4-term congresswoman who infamously called Democratic Rep. John Murtha, a twice-wounded Marine and Vietnam veteran, a “coward” on the House floor (details here) for opposing President George W. Bush’s misbegotten military adventure in Iraq.
I’m not a Republican. I admit it. I can’t vote for people like this under any circumstances, no matter who their Democratic opponent is. But I recognize that voting Republican doesn’t necessarily mean someone is a hater and bigot in every case. A Republican voter can plead ignorance, can say they didn’t know, and I might believe them.