TOPEKA (LifeSiteNews) — The Kansas legislature has passed a ban on gender-confused individuals participating in sex-specific athletic programs that conflict with their actual sex, this time with enough support to overcome a veto by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly.
HB 2238, the “Fairness in Women’s Sports” bill, requires interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, and club athletic teams to be designated according to biological sex and prohibits biological males from participating in teams intended for women and girls. Provisions of the bill would also apply to K-12 public schools and any post-secondary institutions.
The state House voted 82-40 to pass the bill last month, and the state Senate approved it 28-11 last Thursday, Reuters reports.
“This is about fairness in athletic competition,” said Republican state Sen. Renee Erickson, according to the Kansas Reflector. “I’ve heard a lot of, quite frankly, inflammatory accusations and name-calling. We say we don’t like bullying. Name-calling is a hallmark of bullying. Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.”
“If a boy is allowed to take a spot away from any girl, and she doesn’t get that chance to participate, that’s not right,” Erickson added. “The opponents don’t seem concerned about the trophies, placements and championships that are lost by Kansas girls if we don’t pass this.”
On multiple occasions, state Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to advance the issue in past sessions, but HB 2238 has passed with more than the two-thirds support in each chamber required to support a bill for it to become law without a governor’s signature.
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is billed as a matter of “sensitivity” and respect for perceived “gender identity.” But critics note that indulging transgender athletes in this way undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities. Scientific research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 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.”