On Monday, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), an organization responsible for overseeing more than 83,000 athletes, primarily at smaller colleges, passed a ban on transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports. The policy, which received unanimous approval from the NAIA's Council of Presidents in a 20-0 vote, stipulates that only student-athletes whose assigned sex at birth is female will be permitted to compete on NAIA-sponsored women’s sports teams. 

Under the new policy, biological women identifying as transgender men can compete on women’s teams if they haven’t started masculinizing hormone therapy. Those who have will also be barred from NAIA women's competition, but they can participate in workouts, practices, and team activities for women’s teams. However, the NAIA policy states their participation is “at the discretion” of their college. 

All students, including trans men and trans women, will be allowed to compete on men’s teams, according to the policy. The new rules for student-athletes are slated to go into effect on August 1. 

NAIA president and CEO Jim Carr said that the policy was in the best interest of the schools under the organization, but also acknowledged that it will likely be seen as controversial.

Carr told The Associated Press,

We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that. But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.

17 of the 20 presidents who voted in favor of the regulations on participating in women's sports were from schools associated with Christian denominations. Carr acknowledged that he believes these religious views may have played a role, stating,

People have certain views of the world, and even though I believe all our Council of Presidents members are trying to think what’s best for the NAIA, they certainly come to these kinds of issues with their own beliefs and the missions of their institutions in mind, I would think that had some impact.

Along those same lines, the Catholic Church released official doctrine regarding its teachings on transgender issues this week.

As previously reported by RedState's Matt Funicello:

In Vatican City on Monday, The Vatican released a 24-page document titled Dignitas Infinita, Latin for "Infinite Dignity," that classifies transgender surgeries, gender theory, and surrogacy as acts that are an affront to human dignity. The document was the culmination of an over five-year development of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) where they were researching what they believed to be threats to human dignity in the modern world. 

On Monday, Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer turned women's sports activist, celebrated the NAIA decision on social media, writing,

The NAIA becomes the first national college governing body to mandate athletes compete with their sex in an overwhelming 25-0 vote [clapping emoji] 

 'We believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA...We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created'

In a separate post, Gaines tagged the NCAA, telling them to, "Take note."