By Peyton Majors
Christian Action League
April 14, 2023
Supporters of a proposed bill in the North Carolina legislature that would prohibit biological boys from playing on girls’ teams say it would maintain fairness in female sports and protect girls from injuries.
The bill, HB 574 in the House and S631 in the Senate, would change North Carolina law to state that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.” A student’s sex under the proposed law would be “based solely on the student’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
It has been dubbed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”
Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a supporter of the bill, pointed to a controversy from October, when a high-speed volleyball spike by a transgender-identifying Highlands School player injured a female player for Hiwasee Dam High School. The Highlands School player is a biological male who identifies as female.
“This is a bill to make sure that … doesn’t happen again,” Sawyer said.
Supporters of the bill also point to Connecticut, where two high school athletes who are biologically male but who identify as female won a total of 15 state track championships in the female division.
“Having biological males compete against biological females will destroy women’s sports and if we don’t step in that is likely to occur,” Senate leader Phil Berger told The News & Observer. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to get that bill passed.”
The proposed bill further states that athletic teams or sports “designated for males, men, or boys” shall not be open to “students of the female sex unless there is no comparable female team for a particular sport and the sport is not a contact sport.” It requires the State Board of Education to monitor schools for compliance.
Former North Carolina women’s coach Sylvia Hatchell, who is a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, supports the bill.
“Females having to compete against transgenders is not fair and equal,” Hatchell said. “Is there a place for transgenders in sports? Yes there is, but it’s a separate category.”
Sports bodies around the world are tackling the issue. This year, the worldwide governing body for track and field — World Athletics — passed new rules prohibiting biological males from competing in women’s events if they have gone through male puberty. Last year, the worldwide governing body for swimming, FINA, passed a similar rule banning athletes from competing if they’ve gone through puberty.
Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, supports the bill.
“When confronted with the trans issue and its growing acceptance, many people often ask how our country became so delusional,” Creech asked.
“We are witnessing what the apostle Paul warned about in Romans 1. When sexual immorality becomes pervasive in a culture, it progresses downward into worse sins, such as the celebration of sexual perversion, and finally to a ‘depraved mind.’ In other words, the conscience and the moral law God has written on the human heart are lost and no longer function. The mind becomes corrupt, and thinking is highly defective. The mind suppresses the truth. It calls what is evil good and what is good evil. Moreover, there is sympathy and affection for what is degenerate when instead, it should make us shutter with the fear of God. This is where we are today, and it isn’t just sad; it spells our inevitable doom as a people unless a profound move of God turns us around.
“Thank God for those holding the line for what’s righteous by putting forward this legislation. And may God forgive every silent Christian who fails to urge their lawmaker to pass such legislation in such a critical time as the present.”
