For more than 50 years in our country, we’ve worked to strengthen and promote women’s athletics. Those efforts have paid off magnificently. In the recent NCAA basketball finals, the women’s championship had higher television ratings than the men’s for the first time. One hopes it won’t be the last time.
It could be, though, if the Proposal One initiative passes on Nov. 5. Proposal One, innocuously being called the “Equal Rights Amendment”, would give biological males a Constitutional right to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams in New York. Biological males on girls’ and women’s sports teams simply don’t work. That’s so plainly obvious but the ideologues in Albany don’t seem to care.
The full language of the ERA bill (Senate 2023-S108A or Assembly version 2023-1283) states these categories for equal protection – “race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive healthcare and autonomy”. Many of these categories were already enumerated under the federal Civil Rights act of 1964. Aside from the “gender identity” qualifier, which could badly disrupt women’s sports, the word “age” is also very problematic.
If the intent is to grant full and equal rights and privileges to any American citizen regardless of age, clearly that doesn’t fit with the rule of law. Taken to the extreme, ten-year-olds would have to be issued driver’s licenses upon demand. Fourteen-year-olds would have to be served alcohol at their local tavern. More likely the goal of the proposal is to allow for minors to obtain more medical procedures without parental knowledge or consent. Follow the money?
Hormone replacement therapy is very expensive. Biopharm interests stand to make billions if many more youth are given gender manipulation treatments without parental knowledge. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to cut parents out from purely a fiscal restraint viewpoint – those steering the child towards treatment may feel they can direct for extreme levels of spending if taxpayers are covering all costs.
The concept of the ERA is good, but the wording is sloppy and needs to be re-done. The writers of the bills have been told this repeatedly, but they stubbornly would not budge. We need to vote the ballot proposal down so the language can be reworked and presented again in another election.
Sincerely,
Rich Purtell
Apalachin, N.Y.
Get Government out of sports. Let sports destroy themselves