Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports

A new Texas bill would require student athletes to play on the team of their biological sex, not their gender identity.

Quick Facts

• This new bill, known as H.B. 25, was passed by the Texas House and Senate and awaits final approval from the governor.
• This bill would apply to all sports across all age groups — elementary to college — and would cancel out a ruling that said biological males can compete on women’s teams and vice versa if they get approval from a court to legally change their gender on their birth certificate.
• Transgender and LGBTQ activists have labeled the bill as “discriminatory,” while others applaud this bill’s potential to protect girls’ and women’s sports.

Earlier this year, H.B. 25 was passed by the Texas House 76-54 and the Senate 19-12. It was returned to the House where it once again passed, this time 76-61.

There is little doubt that Gov. Greg Abbott, R, will sign this bill into law, as he has already expressed support for the bill.

Texas wouldn’t be the only state to pass a bill banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. To date, it has been banned in Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Senior Policy Advisor for Texas Values Mary Elizabeth Castle applauded the bill, saying: “[It will] protect girls’ Title IX rights to play on a level playing field in sports.”

Not everyone was happy about the decision, however. Rebecca Marques, the Texas director for Human Rights Campaign (an LGBTQ advocacy group), bashed the decision, saying that if Abbott chooses to sign “this discriminatory bill, he is putting the health, safety, and very lives of transgender young people in Texas at risk.”

Kate Oakley, director and senior counsel of Human Rights Campaign, said that Republicans are using the transgender sports bills to distract from other issues going on in the country. She said Republicans have “a failed electrical grid and a Covid crisis, but they’re gerrymandering and attacking trans kids and reproductive rights.”

According to a 2016 poll, Texas has the largest transgender population of any other state in the U.S.

It isn’t a secret that men are much stronger than women. Male athletes are faster, stronger, and have a competitive advantage over women in sports.

To allow biological males to compete with biological females just because they identify as female is very unfair to girls who have dedicated years to being the best in their chosen sport.

Transgender athletes will dominate women’s sports, taking away scholarship opportunities, team spots, and podium honors and will strip female athletes of their dreams.

Saying you support women’s rights and then turning around and allowing men to compete with women on their high school and college sport teams and in their summer leagues is textbook hypocrisy.

Instead of applauding trans-identifying people as brave and fighting for them to play on teams for their “new” gender, we should instead be coming alongside them, giving them support, and affirming that who God created them to be is better than who they, in their moral confusion and desire for peer acceptance, think they want to be.

What we’re seeing is a crisis of young people searching for meaning where we were never meant to find identity and purpose. Jesus is the only way to find true meaning and happiness. It won’t be found in changing your gender — no matter what the media and popular culture may tell us.