Democrats Mount Tactical Retreat on Trangenderism

Pro-transgender officials in President Joe Biden’s administration are dropping a draft regulation that threatened expensive lawsuits against any school that preserved sports for girls.

The move will prevent President-elect Donald Trump’s deputies from rewriting the draft regulations to protect — rather than punish — single-sex K-12 sports.

The pro-transgender regulations from the Department of Education were also intended to force government schools to downplay heterosexuality — and to raise the status of transgenderism — by creating legal rights for K-12 teenagers who claim they are neither male nor female.

“Not upset it’s dead,” said Erin Reed, a writer who claims to be transgender. Biden’s “rule was a terrible rule that could have been weaponized against trans athletes by the Trump admin and there’s a reason 14/16 trans legislators signed a letter against it,” Reed wrote on BlueSky.com.

“The decision helped ensure that the open proposals could not be quickly rewritten and that the Trump administration would have to at least start the process of introducing its own regulations from scratch,” the New York Times wrote.

Democratic politicians are also retreating from transgenderism only because they recognize that Trump gained votes in the November elections by denouncing the transgender ideology,

But the retreat is tactical. Progressive Democrats will continue to push in state legislatures, school districts, and the courts for their demand that government officials enforce people’s claims to have changed legal sex.

“We don’t at all interpret this as a backing down from a commitment to equal opportunity in education and athletics,” said Liz King, a director at the progressive lobby group, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. But, she told the New York Times, the decision is “profoundly disappointing.”

“This is a step in the right direction,” responded the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that fights to preserve conservatives’ legal rights. The group stated;

Unfortunately, the fight [against] gender ideology is far from over. The Biden administration has attempted to insert gender ideology into Title IX by its general Title IX rule adopted earlier this year, the Biden administration has repeatedly told courts that Title IX alone requires schools to admit men into women’s sports, and activist groups across the country have filed numerous lawsuits to force females to compete against males.

Trump opposes transgenderism, mostly because GOP voters viscerally oppose the impact of transgenderism on youth development and on the civic norms that help the two sexes remain equal, different, and complementary.

His appointees will likely try to minimize the legal status of the transgender claim, but the transgender issue is a low priority for Trump.

On December 12, Time magazine posted an interview with Trump after it declared him to be “Person of the Year”:

I don’t want to get into the bathroom [transgender] issue. Because it’s a very small number of people we’re talking about, and it’s ripped apart our country, so they’ll have to settle whatever the law finally agrees. I am a big believer in the Supreme Court, and I’m going to go by their rulings, and so far, I think their rulings have been rulings that people are going along with, but we’re talking about a very small number of people, and we’re talking about it, and it gets massive coverage, and it’s not a lot of people.

…

I want to have all people treated fairly. You know, forget about majority or not majority. I want people to be treated well and fairly.

The media also continues to push the transgender claim that teenagers and adults should be free to switch legal sexes by claiming to have an opposite-sex “gender identity,” regardless of biology. For example, the New York Times reporters and editors wrote:

The Biden administration’s proposed regulations would have been in conflict with many state laws. Half of all states have banned transgender students from taking part in sports consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group that tracks state-level legislation.

Breitbart News closely tracks the transgender issue and the related polls that show growing opposition to transgenderism. For example, Breitbart reported in October a Rasmussen poll that showed 65 percent of Americans are opposed to men competing in women’s sports.