SAUNDERS: Transgender sports rift is officially a Nevada election issue

During Thursday night’s debate between Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, a former Army captain and Purple Heart recipient, KLAS anchor John Langeler asked both candidates their position on the controversy playing out in Nevada over biological males playing women’s sports.

Earlier this month, members of the University of Nevada, Reno women’s volleyball team voted to forfeit a scheduled Oct. 26 match against San Jose State because one of the Spartans is a biological male. UNR brass say the match nonetheless will go on, although the Nevada players will be allowed to boycott without facing punishment.

“I can tell you that all student athletes deserve to have a fair competition and a level playing field,” Rosen replied to the question.

Great, I thought, Rosen realizes there is not a level playing field when male athletes compete against women.

But then Rosen used neutral language that masked her apparent support for coercing female players to compete against men, when she said, “So I support parents, coaches and the governing leagues. They are the governing bodies. They are the experts. I believe that they are the right ones to make these decisions. Not politicians.”

Which told me Rosen supports letting males play against female teams, even if she did not choose to say so explicitly.

Brown got it.

“Nevada, let me be clear, what we just heard was a politician say that she does not have enough knowledge on this issue to know whether or not biological males should be allowed to play in women’s sports,” Brown responded. “I will not support biological males participating in women’s sports.”

Plain English, not hiding behind a panel of “experts.”

And here’s the funny part.

Last year, the American College of Sports Medicine released an “expert consensus statement” that said the following: “Biological sex is a determinant of athletic performance: adult males are faster, stronger, more powerful than females because of fundamental sex differences in anatomy and physiology dictated by sex chromosomes.”

So there goes Rosen’s arguments about “the experts” and a “level playing field.”

There’s something rotten in our politics when university brass and elected officials gang up on students who see the world for what it is in an attempt to make them buckle to an illusion.

The good news: If administrators don’t wise up, the tort system will take care of it. Because some young women are bound to get hurt.

In March, a group of female athletes filed suit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association over its transgender participation policy, which, they argue, violates their rights under Title IX. San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser joined that lawsuit, setting this entire story in motion, saying she and other women shouldn’t be forced to compete, or share locker rooms or hotel rooms, with men.

“A lot of people ask us, why did we wait this long to file a lawsuit? Well, we waited this long to allow the NCAA every opportunity to make the right decision,” former University of Kentucky swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler told ABC News. “The NCAA’s most basic job is to protect the fairness and the safety of its athletes, and it has failed on that simple task.”

One other thing:

You know how liberals like to say they believe in “the science”? They don’t really mean it.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.