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A Vermont high school was expelled from the athletic association they were in, and cannot participate in any future sports, over said school's decision to forfeit a girl's basketball game against a team with a boy on the roster.
Coverage of the original incident:
Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball refused to play Long Trail because of transgender player, forfeits playoff game
The latest:
Mid Vermont Christian School ousted from sports over transgender discrimination; Mid-Vermont Christian deemed ineligible by VPA; Mid Vermont Christian School ousted from Vermont Principals Association-sanctioned activities
A local letter to the editor called for a similar outcome last week.
The school is a Christian school, which I'm sure played a large role in all of this. For my part, I'm left wondering what Title IX was supposed to be for, in light of the Bostock decision and Gorsuch's but-for. If you are a boy, and claim to be a girl, and someone treats you as if you were a boy, then but-for your sex, you would expect to be treated as a girl, and therefore anyone treating you as a boy is discriminating on the basis of sex. Yet Title IX explicitly requires discrimination on the basis of sex, since it requires in practice equal numbers of athletic spots available for each sex.
The particular method of exclusion, through the state athletic association, seems like it would make a good target for a lawsuit under Title IX. The prescreens of a boy on the girl's team denies that spot to a girl (on the basis of sex), yet under Bostock that can't be the case.
How can you square this circle? How can you both require separate (discriminatory) athletic spots based on sex, while simultaneously requiring self-ID onto sex segregated teams?
There's another supreme court case currently being held regarding a high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games. I mention it because it gets at the religious aspect, rather than the sex aspect.
I found two particular parts interesting, aside from the question above. First, the boys defended the honor of their classmates:
And second, it's these boys who will also suffer for the girl's basketball coach's decision to forfeit, and for their Head of School's decision to comment. Their entire school, and all of their sports teams, are now without opponents against which to compete.
Title IX is just one avenue to pursue. This looks like a very likely 1st Amendment violation under a myriad of precedents.
What sort of precedents?
Christianity doesn't exactly address the question of playing sports between the sexes. That makes it a poor fit for freedom-of-religion. It's not establishing one religion over another, either. I'd assume it fails to harm any particular religion, and that there are secular sports teams making similar protests.
Playing coed sports isn’t a religious issue. But by playing with a boy saying he is a girl does bring up religious issues. Then by playing with him/her they are defacto recognizing transgender. Which is mocking god who created man and women as distinct.
Playing a coed game is no problem.
In that case (assuming the existence of God) he also created men who wanted to be women and vice versa, and prople who would support them. Essentially God is mocking Himself, so i am not sure thats a productive line of reasoning.
Fill in any sin in the blank. Murders exists and are cheered on by supporters in some circumstances.
I'm also an atheist but I don't think this is a good gotcha against Christians. Christians are well aware of our sinful nature.
Right, and calling it "mocking God" isn't very meaningful. It proves too much.
SSCReader is pointing out that the objections to sin have nothing to do with mockery, making the latter a pretext. It's not a gotcha for Christians, but for the argument that "defacto recognizing transgender" is proscribed. While that may be true, I think mockery isn't the best reason.
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Thats my point, yes, describing it as sinful makes sense in a Christian framework, describing it as mocking God does not. Murder is sinful but not making a mockery of God, picking out being trans specifically for that doesn't make sense.
I'm not taking issue with Christians viewing it as sinful. My point is Christians shouldn't see this specific sin as making a mockery if they don't others given their own writings on the subject.
Its not a gotcha against Christianity in general, because Christianity in general doesn't use that framework.
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I mean your allowed to just say your atheist etc. but Christian’s have a literal creation story. Which I am sure your well aware of. God didn’t create half men half women.
I am an atheist but that doesn't stop me being able to comment on the logic here. If men and women were created in God's image and God is omniscient and omnipotent then trans men and women are creations of God. They would not exist unless He wanted them to. He could have chosen there to be no trans people or gay people or non-believers etc. The seeds of being trans were contained within the image of God. Now we don't know why that is the case (God works in mysterious ways and so on, maybe created as a test, or to prove a point or some other ineffable reason) but it is the logical outcome of the Christian creation story.
Sin exists. Because some exists doesn’t mean it was made in the image of god. The whole origional sin thing.
I mean you were an obvious atheist. I don’t think you are replying in good faith or lack an understanding of religion.
Think this is simple. Trans people go to hell unless they repent. It’s not something in gods image but a perversion.
What particular kind of soteriology do you subscribe to here? Do you believe any Christian goes to hell for any unrepented-for sins, or do you just think that being openly trans is a mortal sin that destines one for Hell if one does not repent (as opposed to a venial sin that does not)?
I'm curious how you think being created in God's image relates to sex. What does it mean for a female human to be made in the image of a masculine God? I know that the Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine in Hebrew (though neuter in Greek), and there are a few feminine metaphors for God peppered throughout the Bible, but isn't God usually a "He"?
Sure, but isn't it a Christian belief that many of the natural "evils" of the world are a result of original sin, without being themselves sinful? Just because there was no cancer in Eden, doesn't mean that a person getting cancer is sinful.
Why you do you think that medically and socially transitioning as a trans person is more like theft than cancer?
And how do you square all of this with the many references to eunuchs and their place in society in the Old and New Testament? It seems like it is fully possible for a eunuch to be a faithful follower of Christ, and wouldn't trans people arguably belong to that category?
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I was a Christian however, so I have had the lessons, the Sunday School, etc., Religious education classes. And I promise you, I am engaging in good faith, I am just pointing out the even from the point of view of a Christian your argument has issues.
But again, I agree from the point of view of Christianity it makes sense to say that someone transitioning is committing a sin. Agreed. But that wasn't your claim.
But that isn't the same thing as making a mockery of God. Consider that one of the responses when a loved one is murdered or dies of cancer is that God moves in mysterious ways. Indicating that even this is part of His plan. That doesn't mean the murderer wasn't sinning within the Christian context, he certainly was. It is simply the acknowledgment that all things are part of God's plan and that our role is to surrender our faith to that plan. Even things we mortals do not comprehend like untimely deaths or your son coming out as gay or your daughter as trans are part of His plan.
That doesn't mean that your son or daughter are not sinful, but it does mean that God planned that. We don't know why, the reasons are literally ineffable, despite how many words have been written trying to understand it.
Calvin:
"Calvin did not believe God to be guilty of sin, but rather he considered God inflicting sin upon his creations to be an unfathomable mystery.[54] Though he maintained God's predestination applies to damnation as well as salvation, he taught that the damnation of the damned is caused by their sin, but that the salvation of the saved is solely caused by God"
Eastern Orthodox:
"(God's) foreknowledge is unfathomable. It is enough for us with our whole heart to believe that it never opposes God's grace and truth, and that it does not infringe man's freedom. Usually this resolves as follows: God foresees how a man will freely act and makes dispositions accordingly."
Catholicism:
"God] promised not from the power of our will but from His own predestination. For He promised what He Himself would do, not what men would do. Because, although men do those good things which pertain to God’s worship, He Himself makes them to do what He has commanded; it is not they that cause Him to do what He has promised. Otherwise the fulfilment of God’s promises would not be in the power of God, but in that of men"[61]"
Arminianism:
"This means that God does not predetermine, but instead infallibly knows who will believe and perseveringly be saved. Although God knows from the beginning of the world who will go where, the choice is still with the individual."
Middle Knowledge might be the most highbrow - a kind of multiverse:
"God knew what every existing creature capable of libertarian freedom (e.g. every individual human) would freely choose to do in all possible circumstances. It then holds that based on this information, God elected from a number of these possible worlds, the world most consistent with his ultimate will, which is the actual world that we live in."
The idea that being trans (or a murderer) is both sinful AND in line with God's plan and therefore not a mockery is entirely supported by large swathes of writings about resolving the paradox of free will and God's omniscience and (therefore pre-destination of outcome). It's the only real way to tie together the opposing issues. That God both planned for Bob to be the kind of person who would want to become Anne AND that Bob commits a sin by doing so. If you aren't a Christian that is an incoherent mess, what's the difference between perfectly foreseeing the outcome of your and other peoples actions given omnipotence and setting the "rules" and planning the same? If you are a Christian, it makes sense (or at least can make sense, I know a lot of Christians who do struggle with it, which is why there have been a lot of writings about it).
But almost all extant versions of Christianity as far as I can tell (Mormons excepted if you count them as Christian) have the same basic outcome. God did plan/foresee/deliberately put/know/ you will be in this situation with these urges AND set the rules AND if you act upon them you are committing a sin. He planned it AND it is your sin to make or not. You might have failed God when you chose to sin, but saying you are making a mockery of Him, doesn't make sense. Unless every time every Christian slips into sin, they are all making a mockery of God, which therefore makes the criticism far too broad to be useful here.
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This argument proves too much.
This logic would apply just as much to murderers, adulterers, and thieves as it would to trans people, gay people, and non-believers, and yet we know that Christianity does condemn such people to various extents. As such, we know that the tenets of Christianity account for God creating people who mock Himself while discriminating between individuals who are the results of that mockery and those who aren't.
See above for a similar reply, but yes basically. Sinful yes. A mockery of God, no. Just like murder can be sinful but isn't mocking God.
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This just seems like a special case of the generalized problem of evil.
In spite of God's omnipotence and omniscience, people are capable of doing all sorts of things that are contrary to his will - murder, adultery, etc. That's where the concept of "sin" comes from. How can this be? Who knows. Two thousand years of Christian theodicy has furnished a number of answers to this question, take your pick.
A Christian can just say "being trans is like committing murder or adultery - you can do it, but you shouldn't". Your line of reasoning is only a "gotcha" insofar as you think the general problem of evil is a gotcha.
Indeed, which is why I said we don't actually know why God does allow it.
If someone said murder is making a mockery of God, the same critique applies.
That doesn't mean murder is good, just that its hard to describe it as being a mockery of God. It is part of His plan. He knows who will murder and why and when and whom. It is (as is all evil) intrinsically part of His plan for some purpose theologians have struggled with but ultimately do not know.
If you want to say it is sinful, i think that makes sense from within the context of a Christian, no doubt.
God knew at the beginning of Creation how many trans people there would be in 2023. He could have arranged things so that that number was zero. He chose not to. We don't understand why. It could be because He prizes free will so that he chose not to eliminate that potential future quirk of the human pysche. Maybe He is constrained by rules we don't understand. Maybe its Scott's version from Unsong where multiple universe have to be different to maximize good.
But in all cases assuming Christians beliefs about God are accurate it is part of His plan and therefore isn't mocking Him. Unless as stated it is self-mockery. Which is another possibilty, maybe he has a self-deprecating sense of humor! We just don't know.
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These things have answers and I suspect the motte could have a productive discussion on the Christian view of gender deviance/homosexuality without falling into 2010 Reddit atheism gotchas, but it’s the sort of thing that deserves its own top level comment and not sniping under a 4th level comment of athletics policy in Vermont.
Then you should direct this comment to the person arguing it was mocking God in the first place. If I am not allowed to rebut their point because it is too deep a discussion then it shouldn't be allowed as a supporting argument presumably?
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