Democrats are Wrong on Title IX – Girls Matter

Democrats Are Wrong on Title IX – Girls Matter

“Facts are stubborn things,” said Ronald Reagan, quoting his early predecessor John Adams. Maine Democrats and activists in the former Biden Administration are simply wrong about sex and gender. This is not a value statement. While the Bible and history corroborate facts, it is pure biology.

When it was put into law, Title IX explicitly sought to end discrimination on the basis of sex, or gender, for educational programs receiving federal funding. It was intended to protect girls and women, not males who think they are women. Girls Matter.

Before you click away, if you are a Democrat, think about the facts with me. For background – and I think everyone can agree on this – girls and women for centuries were subject to unequal treatment, fewer opportunities, and not allowed on the same footing as boys or men.

This was even true in America, where women were denied the vote until Republican Theodore Roosevelt championed their cause – notably against the guidance of his wife Edith.

Discrimination was pervasive, more than voting. It crosscut law and society, property ownership, office holding, good jobs, education – and sports. Even after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s, first championed by Republican Dwight Eisenhower, girls and women were denied equality.

If this sounds inconsequential, it was not. Young people – boys and girls – learn who they are, what they can do, and what they should expect of themselves, by expectations we set, just as we learned. Girls and women were not permitted equal access to athletics.

Enter Title IX. With a long history, the act had one mission: Advance girls and women. No one at the time, nor anyone since – until the modern madness of redefining boys as girls – imagined Title IX had any purpose but to protect the dignity, privacy, opportunities, and safety of girls in education.

Introduced this month in 1972, it passed 53 years ago. It was the brainchild of Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI), who like many women was earlier denied opportunities, including a chance to take the bar. Even today, women earn less than men in many professions – despite Title IX. Ironically, biggest pay gap? Lawyers.

Title IX had one purpose – protect girls and women in sports and scholarship. Women who fought for it, and women back to Abigail Adams, Edith Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Margaret Chase Smith – would be shocked at its current application, to hurt girls.

Here is where stubborn facts return, must be understood dispassionately, and why President Donald Trump’s reaffirmation of Title IX protections for girls and women is absolutely right.

Ironically, Maine’s female governor and controversial attorney general, himself with a mixed record on treatment of women, are determined to ignore Title IX’s history, purpose, and longstanding legacy of protecting girls and women. They think biology does not matter. Only it does.

What is more, they are putting $250 million for Maine schools at risk. President Trump returned Title IX to its original meaning with Executive Orders, one affirming two sexes, male and female, the other making clear Title IX protects biological girls, not men thinking they are girls.

Despite that clear statement of law – and wide judicial rejection of Biden’s redefinition of Title IX – Maine Democrats have their heads deep into the sand – or in this season, in the snow.

They claim Maine’s progressive “Human Rights Law” – wildly allowing boys to participate in girls’ sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms, reversing their right to compete against girls, equality, privacy, dignity, and safety – somehow takes precedence over federal law. It does not.

There is simply no credible argument for this ideological swerve, this perversion of law by Maine Democrat leaders. Most Democrats – yes, Democrats – should be the first to say so.

One final point. Biology is not debatable. Boys and girls are different in meaningful, incontrovertible, undebatable ways. The physical differences matter, especially in sports.

Genetics are dispositive. They cannot be changed. Sex chromosomes define sexuality. Here is a short genetics course: Fertilization produces a zygote with either two X chromosomes (XX female), or one X, one Y (XY male). This decides the baby’s sex, with it cascading attributes.

The scientific literature is uncontested that males, by both average or mean, weigh more than females, are taller, bigger waist-hip ratio, longer fingers, more “massive” skeletons, larger rib cages, more lung capacity, and have a higher pelvis – not tilted anteriorly, all of which are affecting athletics.

Female ball-and-socket joints have narrower ligaments, more distance between bones, with injury impact. Female hips are wider, their angle making vertical load bearing harder, more rotational force on the knees, increasing “susceptibility to injury of the ACL in female athletes.”

Males have denser, stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments, skulls, plus deeper voices, larger teeth, more muscle, are objectively “stronger” from birth. Studies of thousands proves upper body, respiratory, elbow and knee strength favor boys, female strength “42 to 63 percent of male strength.”

Other non-trivial differences from birth include pain receptors; boys and men have higher pain tolerance. Topping it all off, when girls face undue stress – for example pushed into locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports with men, they get higher anxiety. “By mid-adolescence, girls are twice as likely to develop mood disorders as boys,” with other very bad effects.

So, what are Democrats doing? Hurting girls. Maine’s Democrat leaders are just wrong. President Trump – perhaps more importantly those who fought for Title IX – are right. Reagan (and Adams) were right: “Facts are stubborn things.” Title IX is for protecting girls. Getting this right matters.

Robert B. Charles, a Maine attorney who lives in Leeds, worked extensively in Washington, DC in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. He has served as assistant secretary of state, as a reserve naval intelligence officer, and has written two books on Maine.