Women's rights, due process, and free speech take a Biden beating
Women's rights, due process, and free speech take a Biden beating
And I started a company!
As many of you know, I write a monthly column in my local paper that I often share here too since so many of you live far away and won’t be picking up our free weekly paper at the grocery store or coffee shop. This piece below ran here today in The Valley Breeze.
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
What you just read are the 37 words that make up our federal Title IX law in its entirety. Many people wrongly think that Title IX only pertains to women and college sports. It’s an understandable misconception that I too once held. And back in 1973 when the law was passed, it absolutely did come to the rescue of girls and women who, for far too long, had been excluded from participation in sports and other activities in K-12 and on college campuses. The reason I had access to sports that my mother and grandmother did not was the passage of Title IX the year I was born.
But the law exists to protect girls and boys, men and women, from sex-based discrimination. And President Biden just blew the whole thing up in the name of “inclusion.”
Last Friday, the Biden administration released its long awaited revision to Title IX, and it’s an understatement to call it a disaster. In a complete abuse of power, the executive branch circumvented Congress completely and drafted 1,577 pages that deny biological reality, upend due process, and spit in the eye of the First Amendment. It’s bad for women and girls. It’s bad for boys and young men. And it’s bad for free speech.
The revisions to the law broaden the definition of sex-based discrimination to include “gender identity,” and this means that single-sex spaces in pre-K through college can no longer exist. Anyone, student or staff, can self-identify into the restroom, locker room or sleeping quarters of their choice. If girls and women object to the presence of male genitalia in their locker room, they can be investigated and found guilty of “sex-based harassment.” When students go on an overnight field trip, sleeping arrangements will be determined based on gender identity. And if you’re assuming that parents have the right to know that their children are spending the night in the same room and even the same bed as a member of the opposite sex, think again. No such right exists.
At the college level, if a young man is accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, a single Title IX investigator employed by the college or university now gets to be judge, jury and executioner. The changes to the law eliminate the accused person’s right to know what he’s accused of, see the evidence against him, or have his accuser cross-examined. Due process and the presumption of innocence are completely gone, just as I said they would be in my column of September 2022.
The Title IX rewrite also has First Amendment problems because it compels speech and our constitution forbids compelled speech. Under the new rules, a single instance of misgendering someone is cause for disciplinary action. If a classmate who says they’re “gender fluid” wants to be called “he” one day and “she” the next and “they” the next, students and staff are required, by law, to play along. If a male teacher with a full beard (who now has a right to use the ladies’ room) tells students to call him “she,” they are required to do so.
The Title IX changes are to take effect Aug. 1, but with lawsuits already in the works to challenge the revisions, that timeline will likely change.
On a much lighter note, I started a company! It’s called LOVE my view, LLC and it’s all about “bringing gratitude back to the game.” For so many years, I have loved my view at the baseball field, football field and basketball court…when my oldest son graduated last year, I became keenly aware of how fast it all goes by.
To start, we have football, baseball, basketball, soccer and lacrosse products. We hope to add more sports soon.
Our website is lovemyview.com. Come visit, shop and spread the word! A bit of gratitude goes a long way in changing our mindset and our mood — in 2024, I think a lot of us really need that.
To read the origin story for LOVE my view, click here.
Talk soon,
Erika
The amendments to Title IX will be litigated and creep through the federal courts, the current SCOTUS has the position that federal agencies have limited authority and their rule making is unconstitutional- we’ll see …