Tennessee Senate Advances Bill That Withholds Funding From Schools Allowing Transgender Athletes To Compete
Tennessee legislation that would withhold funding from school districts allowing transgender students to participate in sports passed in the Senate Education Committee on March 29.
If passed into law, Senate Bill 1861 (pdf) would require the commissioner of education to withhold a portion of state education funding if the school refuses to determine the gender of a student participating in sports.
“We passed a bill last year that required boys to play boys and girls to play girls in K–12, and this bill is putting teeth into it,” Rep. John Ragan, a Republican, said on the House floor when speaking about the companion House Bill 1895.
The bill assigns unspecified financial penalties to the Tennessee law passed in 2021 that prohibited males from playing in female sports.
Opposition to the Bill
According to organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest LGBTQ-advocate organizations, the bill is discriminatory. The organization stated that allowing transgender youth to participate in sports doesn’t disadvantage other athletes.
“This bill is only an attempt to continue the conversation to publicly ostracize, demonize, and harm transgender children who only want to play,” HRC said in a press release.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat, said of the bill’s passage on Twitter: “Today on the floor we passed another LGBTQ hate bill (HB1895) that takes away school funding based on last year’s ‘solution’ to a problem we don’t have. There is so much hate in this body due to pure ignorance—it’s stunning.”
In response to those who call it a “hate bill,” Ragan told The Epoch Times that those statements are “emotionally-based rhetoric, not based in logic.”
“And I personally don’t hate any of these people,” Ragan said. “But by the same token, the law is the same for everybody. You don’t get a special exemption just because you think you’re not what you are physically.”
Quoting from the Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire, Ragan said, “‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ And the definition of absurdity in my mind is denying reality.”
Rep. Kent Calfee, a Republican, pointed to the transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who in March won the 500-yard freestyle race at the NCAA Division 1 women’s championship. Lia Thomas grew up competitively swimming as a male who began taking hormone replacement therapy in 2019, declaring himself a woman in his junior year in college.
“That’s totally unfair to people who were born a woman and are competing,” Calfee said.
Another Ragan-sponsored bill, HB 2316, which passed in House and Senate committees, would prohibit males from participating in female sports in higher education.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tennessee-senate-advances-bill-withholds-funding-schools-allowing-transgender-athletes