Republican members in the US Congress have passed a bill that require all children to play school sports in categories corresponding with the sex they were assigned at birth.
The bill passed 218 – 206, with two Democrats voting in favour of the bill. The legislation will now have to get through the senate to progress to the next stage in the political process.
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act would remove Title IX rules that currently allow transgender girls to play sport in the female category. The ban would apply to any school receiving federal funding.
Florida representative Greg Steube who sponsored the bill said the law needed reflect the belief that God created distinct categories of men and women.
“All throughout humanity, we have recognized as a species that there are women and there are men, as God created, who are obviously biologically different.” Steube said.
Speaking after the bill was passed on the Christian news program Washington Watch Steube said that terms including ‘transgender girl’ and ‘transgender boy’ were made up terms that didn’t exist a decade ago.
“The Democrats call this discriminating against trans women and trans boys and all of that kind of stuff, made up terminology. Ten years ago nobody would have known what that word means.”
The Republican representative said the Democrat members supported over 70 different genders, including people who identified as “astral gender”. Steube said astral gendered people believe they have a gender related to outer space.
“They can define what astral gender is but they can’t define what a woman is.” Steube said.
The Republican member said during the debate Democrat members has lied by suggesting that the bill would lead to sport coaches asking to see children’s genitals to confirm they gender. Steube said the bill would just require parents to supply their child’s birth certificates.
At a media conference following the passage of the bill Republican representative Lisa McClain from Michigan said the laws were needed because of predatory men, and the recent election of Donald Trump as the country’s President had delivered a mandate to take action.
“They do not want men in women’s sport or locker rooms and we’re following through with the mandate given to us. It sickens me knowing that confused and predatory men can take away years of hard work from our girls ad enter their sports and their locker rooms.”
House speaker Mike Johnson told the media that “biology is not bigotry” saying the belief that humans were only male and female was supported by both biology and scripture.
The bill has been opposed by more than 400 civil rights organisations who argue that it marks an unprecedented intrusion into school sports that could spark widespread investigations into student medical records.
How many transgender students are in the USA is debatable, figures from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 3% of the student population is transgender. However a 2022 report from The Williams Institute put the figure much lower at just 1.4 per cent. It would equate to around 300,000 young people between 13 and 17 years of age across the USA.
Local campaigners welcome the US decision and call on Australian leaders to follow suit
Stephanie Bastiaan from Australian Women’s Forum told Sky News that the decision was “absolutely beautiful” and she hoped it would lead to the topic being a major issue during the upcoming federal election campaign.
Western Australian independent MP Sophia Moermond also welcomed the decision saying Australia needed to take action on the issue too.
“The US is leading the way in protecting the rights of women and girls. Australia needs to reinstate the definition of woman/girl/female so that sex based protections become meaningful again.” Moermond said in a social media post.
