FL Gov. Protects Female Athletes

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Florida's Catholic governor is placing female athletes above politics, state revenue, LGBT ideology and sporting events.

During an interview Tuesday with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Gov. Ron DeSantis told critics at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to bring it on after it threatened to pull events from the state over his signing of the "Fairness in Women's Sports Act."

I remember the NCAA put out a statement saying any state that enacts this, we're not going to hold events there. And so I called the Speaker of the House in Florida and I said, "did you hear what they said?" And he's like, "yeah." I said, we definitely got to get this done. You can't be cowed by these organizations or particularly by woke corporations from doing the right thing.

Earlier that day he signed into law Senate Bill 1028. The new law mandates athletes show their birth certificates before joining an all-female sports team. It also allows women to sue schools for discrimination if they're forced to compete against so-called transgender athletes.

DeSantis told Tucker he wasn't going to play ball with the NCAA:

And so my view was throughout this whole time, we have to protect our girls. It is discriminatory to force them to compete against biological males. And so if the price of having a tournament is that I have to deny equal opportunity to hundreds of thousands of young girl and women athletes throughout Florida, I am much more willing to stand with the girls. And to hell with these events.

One transgender advocacy group, Equality Florida, was enraged at the governor's decision, calling it bigotry.

"This bill is shameful, violent and just made the world less safe for our most vulnerable young people," it said in a string of tweets. "To trans kids: we see you. We love you. And we will fight this bigoted bill until it is in the waste bin of history."

The tweets made no mention of women athletes who are physically unable to perform against biological males. The group responded by mobilizing several rallies across the state to protest the law on Tuesday.

Roughly 100 bills have been introduced in more than 20 states this year to protect young athletes from transgender ideology. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and West Virginia have already passed similar legislation to protect women athletes.

With several bills on the table and opposition to so-called trans issues ramping up over the past two years, LGBT advocates are entering a bleak second half on issues of gender — giving conservatives the edge.

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