President Joe Biden on Monday denounced a bill by Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube to keep men out of women’s sports, calling it “discriminatory.”
Biden also vowed to veto the measure on those grounds if it comes to him because the Sarasota Republican’s bill “targets people for who they are.”
Biden was responding to the progress of Steube’s “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023.”
As The Free Press has reported, the bill, introduced in February, ensures that women’s competitive sports funded through the federal law known as Title IX feature biological females competing against other biological females.
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In a statement issued last month after the bill cleared an important committee vote, Steube said, “The policies of the woke, progressive Left have invaded schools and campuses across America. Allowing biological males on women’s sports teams and in their locker rooms creates an unfair competitive environment for female athletes. Americans deserve the opportunity to see where their elected representatives stand on this incredibly important issue.”
The bill has 93 co-sponsors, all Republicans.
But it is the “policies of the woke, progressive Left” that Biden seeks to defend, even if that means allowing children in the lower grades of elementary school to transition.
In a message to Steube and the other GOP lawmakers, Biden said on Monday his administration “strongly” opposes the bill, and would veto it, if given the opportunity.
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He called participating in sports and being part of a team “an important part of growing up, staying engaged in school, and learning leadership and life skills.” Yet, Steube’s measure would “deny access to sports for many families by establishing an absolute ban on transgender students—even those as young as elementary schoolers—playing on a team consistent with their gender identity.”
Biden claimed, without proof, that schools, coaches, and athletic associations nationwide are already working with families to develop participation rules “that are fair and that take into account particular sports, grade levels, and levels of competition.”
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Steube’s bill instead “targets people for who they are and therefore is discriminatory.”
“Politicians should not dictate a one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams,” said the president who once advocated that all Americans be forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine, even if they didn’t want one.
Biden then claimed that a recent survey showed half of transgender youth have “seriously considered” suicide, without contemplating the fact that may be related to their current mental state and not to bills like Steube’s.
“A national law that further stigmatizes these children is completely unnecessary, hurts families and students, and would only put students at greater risk,” Biden asserted.
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“Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools or on our playing fields,” he added, apparently unconcerned about the effect on women of having biological men dominate their sports.
“Instead of addressing the pressing issues that families and students face today — such as raising teacher pay, keeping guns out of schools, addressing the mental health crisis our youth face, and helping students learn and recover academically from unprecedented disruptions — Congressional Republicans have instead chosen to prioritize policies that discriminate against children,” Biden concluded.
Steube’s bill does make allowances for males to be in female sports.
His bill states, “Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a recipient [school] from permitting males to train or practice with an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.”
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