University of South Carolina women’s head basketball coach and self-identifying Christian, Dawn Staley, was asked by a reporter if she believes men who masquerade as women should be permitted to play on women’s sports teams. Staley offered this cowardly and/or ignorant reply: “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play.”
If she believes cross-dressing men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, she’s ignorant. If she believes they should not be able to compete in women’s sports but refused to express that belief publicly, she’s a coward.
Of course, since America is controlled institutionally by leftist ideologues, there has been no shortage of fawning over Staley’s response.
Journalist and Davidson College assistant professor in Communication Studies Issac Bailey wrote an especially foolish opinion piece for the Charlotte Observer that exposed both his theological ignorance and moral vacuity.
Bailey characterizes Staley’s purported support for “trans” athletes as an “embrace” of “Jesus’ ‘the least of these’” exhortation in Matthew 25. There are two significant problems with Bailey’s claim.
First, as author and pastor Kevin DeYoung explains, the “least of these” “refers to other believers in need—specifically, itinerant Christian teachers dependent on other Christians for hospitality and support.” The “least of these” does not refer to those who affirm identities constituted by volitional behavior that God views as sinful.
Second, the treatment described in Matthew 25 pertains to providing food to Christians who are hungry, drink to Christians who are thirsty, welcome to the brother in Christ, and visits to Christians who are sick and imprisoned.
The treatment Christians owe to other Christians is decidedly not the affirmation of sinful behavior, which cross-dressing is.
While it is a very good thing for Christians to feed the hungry and tend the sick, the passage to which Bailey refers is an exhortation by Jesus on how Christians should treat fellow believers.
Bailey described the question posed by the reporter as a “curve ball.” A question posed to a women’s coach about an issue that is in the news virtually every day and roiling the world of women’s sports is “a curve ball”? Surely, Bailey jests. Every coach in American should be prepared for that question.
Bailey then described opposition to men invading girls’ and women’s sports as one of many “unnecessary-ginned up outrages.”
That’s a novel way of dismissing the concerns of marginalized female athletes who have seen their places in prelims and finals, and on winners’ podiums lost to men: condescendingly mock their concerns as “unnecessary-ginned up outrages.”
Bailey bases his ridicule on the fact that the number of cross-dressing men seeking to invade women’s sports is relatively small. So much for compassion for the relatively few now-marginalized women whose years of training are rendered meaningless and dreams dashed by the inclusion of men where they don’t belong.
How many girls and women must be affected, how many have to lose their rightful place in finals, how many must be shoved off winners’ podiums or lose medals, how many must have their records broken by men before Bailey cares about them—or justice?
Bailey wasn’t done casting aspersions on those who support single-sex sports: “For once, a public figure supported them – unquestionably – instead of giving in to those who have turned them into bogeymen for the sin of existing.”
“For once”? Public figures Billie Jean King, Megan Rapinoe, Regina King, Selena Gomez, Alyssa Milano, Halle Berry, Janelle Monae, Laverne Cox, Gloria Steinem, Gabrielle Union, Wanda Sykes, WNBA legend Candace Parker, and many others have for years supported boys playing in girls’ sports.
Bailey has turned those who support Title IX, who support the right of their daughters to be free of men in their sports and locker rooms into bogeymen for the sin of believing girls and women exist and men can’t become women through the power of desire and chemical doping.
No one denies that people with gender dysphoria exist. No one denies that men who wish they were women exist. Many people, however, deny that men can become women. Those people are deists, theists, atheists, pastors, physicians, and scientists. Those people also tend to deny the earth is flat.
There are also people who believe volitional cross-dressing is wrong; who believe denying one’s objective, immutable biological sex is a sign of mental and/or moral illness; and who believe that forcing others to treat men as if they are women (and vice versa) is an unmitigated evil.
Since in the past, Staley has been refreshingly open about her Christian faith, many Americans have speculated that her recent response must have been impelled by fear for her job. Bailey called such speculation “laughable” because Staley is coaching in “bright red South Carolina, not deep blue San Francisco.” He continued, “It would have been easier to join in the demonization of trans people.”
I detect a hint of disingenuousness from Bailey. He lives and moves and has his being in hotbeds of leftism: academia and the press. Surely, he knows that virtually all state universities are what is euphemistically called “LGBTQ-friendly.”
Columbia, South Carolina has big, flaming annual pride parades, pride weeks, and “Outfests.” The university has an active “LGBTQ” community. It would be far easier in almost any secular university community today to join the demonization of opponents of “trans” cultism.
Bailey concluded his screed with these nonsensical claims:
As a player, she was a tenacious point guard (read: leader on the court) and won a couple of player-of-the-year honors during a hall of fame career that included an Olympic gold medal. As a coach, there has been no better ambassador for the game. Staley’s refusal to marginalize the trans community crystallized the real question. If she isn’t afraid of the trans community, why are so many others?
Neither Staley’s prowess on the court, her Olympic medal, nor her ambassadorship for women’s basketball grant her any special wisdom on whether reality-denying men should play women’s sports.
Nor does her lemming-like capitulation to the “trans” community prove her lack of fear to this group whose cyclopean power scares cowards everywhere.
Any society that discriminates between right and wrong—which every society does—will have marginalized groups. The question isn’t whether marginalized groups will exist. The question is which groups will be marginalized.
With friends like Staley, who missed an opportunity to come alongside women like Riley Gaines and defend truth, marginalized female athletes don’t need cross-dressing enemies.