(LifeSiteNews) — A group of Republican senators joined their colleagues in the House of Representatives in calling on the NCAA to ban gender-confused men from participating in women’s sports.
Twenty-three GOP lawmakers led by Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee sent a joint letter to Charlie Baker, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, arguing that “science” shows that males have a distinct advantage when competing against women.
“Amid the Biden-Harris administration’s unprecedented assault on Title IX, we write to urge the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to update your student-athlete participation policy to require that only biologically female students participate in women’s sports,” the letter reads.
“When adult males’ athletic performance is contrasted with adult females’ athletic performance in sports relying on endurance, muscle strength, speed, and power, males dominate, outperforming females by 10 to 30 percent.”
Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas, Steve Daines of Montana, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama are among those who added their names to the statement. Former All-American swimmer Riley Gaines and more than a half-dozen women’s advocacy groups also endorsed it.
The letter comes just four months after 17 House Republicans wrote a similar letter calling on Baker to “follow the NAIA’s lead on this issue and prohibit transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.”
The NAIA is the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which governs collegiate competition at nearly 250 small colleges and universities across the United States. Catholic colleges like Benedictine in Kansas and Ave Maria in Florida are NAIA members. The association’s governing body voted 20-0 in April to adopt the ban.
Spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, the House letter argues that “women in NCAA-affiliated schools should not fear having their athletic accomplishments minimized by biological males, as happened in the 2022 NCAA 500-yard freestyle event, with Lia Thomas, a biological man, taking the championship over Emma Weyant.”
Signatories of the statement include Jim Banks of Indiana, Dan Crenshaw of Texas, and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.
Current NCAA policy mirrors that of the International Olympic Committee in that it allows men who identify as woman to play in female events if their testosterone levels are under allowable limits over an extended period of time.
The pressure being put on Baker is not only a political move ahead of this year’s presidential election but also apparently a response to a letter signed by 400 former collegiate and professional athletes in April who called on the NCAA to allow gender-confused athletes to play in their preferred gender.
Outspoken LGBT activist Megan Rapinoe, formerly of the U.S. women’s soccer team, was among those who added their name to the letter, which prompted the NCAA to reply by noting that is continuing to make “unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes.”
At this year’s Olympic Games in Paris, two boxers in the female competition have advanced to their respective gold-medal fights. Both of them are suspected to be men, as they were prevented from a previous tournament run by the International Boxing Association. The association’s president told BBC sports that XY chromosomes were found in its testing of the two individuals.