Loren Lippincott
In June of 1972 President Richard Nixon signed into the federal civil rights law Title 9 which gave young women the same access to classes and sports as young men enjoyed. Girls were allowed to take classes such as auto mechanics in school and boys could sign up for home economics classes but the legislation also opened the doors to more sports for women. For more than 50 years Title 9 seemed to be operating well until recently when the Biden Administration decided to do a rewrite of this law, bypassing Congress in the process. Once the rewrite is handed down to the states, schools’ federal funding will be at risk if they do not comply.
What will this mean for young women across the country? Here are some of the changes Title 9 would now mandate, as reported by Alliance Defending Freedom: The rewrite destroys the safety and privacy of young girls. At most schools — whether public or private, K-12 or college — girls will be forced to share locker rooms, restrooms and hotel rooms with males who identify as females. Instead of promoting and protecting women’s sports, as Title 9 was originally intended to do, the rewrite jeopardizes women’s sports because it is impossible to redefine “gender” without impacting the future of sports. These changes open the door to more women and girls being robbed of athletic opportunities, fair competition and the thrill of victory.
In testifying against the changes, one 15-year-old girl said, “Now, whenever a boy identifies as a girl, that boy can come into my locker room where I change. He can use the bathroom where I need privacy. He can even get placed into my hotel room with me overnight when my team travels.” Furthermore, if she complains, she becomes the problem!
That brings up another point. The Biden/Harris rewrite of Title 9 also threatens First Amendment rights because it compels speech via forced pronouns. Under the new rules, using pronouns that match a person’s biology could be considered “sex-based harassment” and be subject to investigation and discipline. Students and teachers will be forced to use inaccurate pronouns that promote gender ideology. In essence the rules force people to speak a lie (bearing false witness) and threaten them with punishment if they don’t.
Furthermore, the Title 9 rewrite is a lawless abuse of executive power. The administration is trying to completely change the meaning of a law passed by Congress without the approval of Congress which is patently illegal and unconstitutional.
The rewrite also threatens parental rights and creates confusion that schools can abuse to justify violating the rights of parents. School personnel would be able to implement policies to socially “transition” children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. A boy does not just become a girl on the basis of how he feels or thinks and the very idea is a slap in the face of God’s sovereign design in creation. However, this is exactly what the Biden Administration is trying to enshrine into law.
So far 20 Republican state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against this attempted re-write. Additionally, governors in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas have said they will not follow Biden’s re-write of Title 9. Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott wrote to Texas colleges directing them not to follow the mandate, saying, “President Biden wants to force every school across the country to treat boys and men as if they were girls and women and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity, exceeding his authority as president in order to impose a leftist belief on the next generation.” In response to the pushback, Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has said, “Federal rules trump state rules.”
While some states are pushing back, the fear of losing federal subsidies is a powerful club (one of the many negatives of being dependent upon the federal government). For instance, the University of Nebraska receives more than $600 million in federal funding yearly to fund its $3 billion budget.
As our society moves further away from objective Biblical truth as a fixed reference point, our government reflects the “everyone does as they see fit” anarchy of the biblical book of Judges. People increasingly determine their own truth and vigorously attempt to impose those truths on others for validation. And as Voltaire said, “Anyone who can get you to believe the absurd can get you to do atrocities.”
Those of us who stand up against these injustices are increasingly being cast as the villains, for as George Orwell said, “The further a society drifts away from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” But I’d rather stand on the side of eternal truth than go down with the multitudes who have no use for it and I will continue to support and protect women of all ages.
Loren Lippincott represents Legislative District 34 in the Nebraska State Senate. Read his column in the Nance County Journal.