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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill banning transgender girls from school sports10 Tampa Bay / YouTube

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TALLAHASSEE, June 1, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Florida became the latest state to protect women’s sports for actual women Monday, as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that will exclude biological males who claim transgender status from competing with the opposite sex in sex-specific athletic programs.

The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act had been proclaimed dead by opponents after being shelved by Senate Republicans with just days left in the legislative session. But Republicans revived the measure at the end of April by attaching it to a charter school bill.

“Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls may not be open to students of the male sex,” the new law reads. “For purposes of this section, a statement of a student’s biological sex on the student’s official birth certificate is considered to have correctly stated the student’s biological sex at birth if the statement was filed at or near the time of the student’s birth.” Female athletes affected by violations can sue for damages.

“In acting to defend women’s sports in Florida today, Governor Ron DeSantis has solidified his reputation as a fearless conservative who will face down attacks from the woke elite in order to do what’s right for his constituents,” said American Principles Project president Terry Schilling, who joined DeSantis at the bill signing ceremony. “This is exactly the quality which voters are so desperately looking for in their national leadership.”

“When we began working on this issue over two years ago, very few Republicans were interested in standing up for female athletes,” Schilling continued. “Many were fearful of the boycott threats from woke corporations and bad publicity from the leftist-dominated media. But by joining Florida to a growing coalition of states that are moving to explicitly protect a fair playing field for female athletes, Gov. DeSantis has sent a message to the woke elite: attack us at your peril. While economic boycott threats might have worked against a single state, the strength of many state leaders standing together to defend women’s sports is certain to neutralize the left’s favorite playbook.”

Florida is now the eighth state with similar language on the books.

LGBT activists claim it’s “discriminatory” to reserve female competitive sports for actual females, and conservatives argue that forcing girls to compete against boys deprives the former of recognition and scholarship opportunities that were originally instituted to advance girls academically and professionally. Further, scientific research indicates that testosterone suppression does not eliminate all the physical advantages that come with male physiology. 

In a paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy”; therefore, “the advantage to transwomen (biological men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”

This is only the latest in a string of actions DeSantis has taken that have pleased conservatives, such as banning left-wing critical race theory from public schools, forbidding “vaccine passports” that would coerce Floridians into taking a COVID-19 vaccine against their will, pardoning residents who violate local COVID-19 restrictions, increasing penalties for rioting, limiting social media giants’ power to deplatform their political enemies, and signing an election law that strengthens signature verification for mail ballots and bans ballot harvesting. This record has made DeSantis a top contender for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination in the minds of many conservatives.