We've all known for a long time that red-state Democrats can be just as unhinged as blue-state Democrats. Every red state has its blue (mostly urban) enclaves, and they can really throw a wrench into the political works. Not even the Last Frontier is immune from Democrat nonsense. Alaska House Bill 183 is being hashed out in Juneau, where the fight to protect girls' school sports is being, amazingly, hard-fought, with Democrats (mostly from Anchorage and Juneau) even filibustering the bill at one point. Democrats have also introduced dozens of nonsensical amendments designed as poison pills. As of this writing, the bill has been tabled until May 12th. Must Read Alaska's Suzanne Downing has the details:
House Bill 183, which clarifies protections for girls sports in Alaska schools ran into trouble with House Democrats and even some Republicans on Thursday. Evidently, supporting Title IX in its intended form, which is protection for girl athletes, is such a touchy subject that House members didn’t want to vote on it. It was tabled.
Rep. Alyse Galvin argued that her own child had changed his or her gender and even had his/her birth certificate changed, and so she felt her child was attacked by the provision that girls shouldn’t be forced to compete against boys in sports.
Rep. Zack Fields said it was just too much work to try to figure out who is a boy and who is a girl, and the schools are already too underfunded already.
Rep. Rebecca Himschoot asserted that students would have to undress for a formal inspection of their genitals.
Rep. Sara Hannan said there’s no real way to know what some baby’s sex is without a complicated hormone test, which isn’t done.
What utter horse squeeze. "Too much work" to figure out who is a boy and who is a girl? Unless a birth certificate has been changed — Alaska allows it, which is another issue that really should be addressed — all one has to do is look at the certificate. And nobody, anywhere, thinks that making kids undress for a genital inspection is necessary, nor is a "complicated hormone test." You can, in an overwhelming majority of cases, tell a baby's sex within moments of birth by looking at it. People have been doing this since the Stone Age.
These arguments are the pure straw men. There is no reality behind them. They are intended to obfuscate, to gum up the works, to take any hamhanded legislative shenanigans to prevent passage of House Bill 183.
See Related: Alaska House Bill 183 Will Protect Alaska's Girls' Sports
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Democrats have been offering ridiculous amendments in another attempt to stop the bill.
Rep. Andrew Gray went on at length about transgenders and argued that intersex people would not be protected (they are said to comprise 0.018% of all people, according to the National Institutes of Health.)
Rep. Gray offered an amendment that stated that transgender people have constitutional rights and all protections of other citizens, but he all-but admitted that his amendment was a way to invalidate the underlying legislation. His amendment was a poison pill to give the Alaska Supreme Court permission to decide that boys competing as girls is a constitutional right.
It failed to pass, as Republican representatives recognized it as a poison pill.
Of course, it's a poison pill. That was the intent.
Granted, the state level is where these issues should be decided, but even in red states, it hasn't been easy sledding in the quest to just guarantee fairness in girls's school sports. But that's where we are; in Juneau, Democrats have offered over a hundred nonsensical amendments to this bill and even attempted a filibuster to stop it.
I won't attempt to predict what will happen with this bill. Alaska is a reliably red state in presidential elections, but the state legislature is more mixed-up than outsiders might think, what with the Democratic-dominated Anchorage bowl and also-Democratic Juneau balancing more conservative areas like the Matanuska-Susitna and Kenai Peninsula Boroughs. But all too often, what should happen in politics isn't what does happen, and even Alaska Democrats seem determined to deny facts in this issue, the primary facts being that, no, it's not at all difficult to differentiate between boys and girls, and allowing boys to compete against girls on girl's sports teams is hideously unfair.
Humans are sexually dimorphic. Men and boys, even before puberty, are generally bigger, stronger, faster, and have more endurance than women and girls. These are facts. And it's baffling how, even here in the Great Land, where common sense among the populace is still fairly common, we are still arguing this ridiculous issue.
