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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.
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.
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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