Roy Exum
As about 92 percent of the Chattanoogan readers who responded to a poll expressed, the chance that transgender males who identify themselves as females be allowed to participate in women's sports is absolutely absurd. Tennessee’s House of Representatives forwarded a bill in opposition quickly to the state Senate on Tuesday night. Hours later, Tennessee Equality Project Executive Director Chris Sanders whined, "The bill is discriminatory in and of itself, but it's also misleading … (The legislators) are not providing a path for everyone to play, they are picking a group of people and trying to find a way to sit them out."
Whoa … it is Sanders who is misleading and therein lies the rub.
No one in America has ever said a transgender athlete cannot participate or play organized middle school, high school, college, or professional sports. That is totally a non-issue. Just like any other alternative group, every child is welcome to play sports with no penalties … and in no way has anyone suffered from discrimination. Sanders’ sensationalism of we are going to “sit” anybody out is plain and simple B.S. (blowing smoke).
No … what America is saying to the liberal lunatics who fall for such prattle is that biological athletes with male chromosomes must play against like males, and females with chromosomes found in women are restricted to competition with like females. It is that simple. And it is so fair it defies further thought, idiotic argument, and much less a repugnant political stance.
A chromosome is defined as a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. While a human being has the freedom in the United States to decide if they are a male or a female, a bullfrog, a dogwood tree, or a pickle, nobody has the ability to decide what chromosome they’ll carry around. That is determined by the Lord above, and while the Frankenstein quacks can dole out potions, creams, olive oil rubs, nauseating surgical experiments, and all of the wingnut exorcists you can find, truth-based scientists will laugh at any pretenders.
Over 100 years ago the world’s top medical pioneers and knights discovered the XY sex-determination system. With the help of Wikipedia, we learn this is a time-proven system used to classify many mammals, including humans, some insects (Drosophila), some snakes, some fish (guppies), and some plants (Ginkgo tree). In this system, the one-and-only sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes. Females typically have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX) and are called the homogametic sex. Males typically have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY) and are called the heterogametic sex. There are no loopholes, and there is no getting around it. It is absolute.
In a miniscule number of humans – much smaller than the 0.6 percent of Americans who are believed to self-identify as transgender – there have been identified “rare disorders such as XX males (often due to translocation of the SRY gene to the X chromosome) or XY gonadal dysgenesis in people who are externally female (due to mutations in the SRY gene). In addition, other rare genetic variations such as Turners (XO) and Klinefelters (XXY) are seen as well. (In most species in XY sex determination, an organism must have at least one X chromosome in order to survive.)
One more … I am told by medical professionals there is no acceptable method to prove or disprove a transgender’s claim that they are, or are not, a male or female. There is DNA testing that can affirm rather quickly if a person is biologically a male or a female. But, to date, there is no scientific test that I can identify that determines one’s chromosomes are liars.
Yesterday Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said, "Transgenders participating in women's sports will destroy women's sports, It will ruin the opportunity for girls to earn scholarships. It will put a glass ceiling back over women that hasn't been there."
Understand, Governor Lee knows about as much about chromosomes as you and I do … I’ll bet he can’t even spell the word correctly, but like the overwhelming majority of the Legislature, the Governor recognizes an executive order by the Biden Administration, which bars gender discrimination, including denying students access to school sports based on their gender identity, is a horrible overreach. "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports," the President’s order reads.
Tennessee Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka (a town in Maury, County, about 50 miles south of Nashville, via Franklin) deems it unfair for student athletes to compete with each other if they do not share the same biological sex. The bill, which argues boys can be physically stronger than girls and can therefore cause injuries to girl players, would effectively ban student participation in school sports under their chosen gender identity. Senator Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, carries the bill in the upper chamber.
A couple of years ago a similar bill in the Tennessee Legislature couldn’t get traction but this one will. “This is about the competitive balance, the safety for our girls and the opportunity for advancements in their careers," Cepicky said Tuesday night. "That's what this bill does. That's all this bill does."
The controversial Rep. Glen Casada, R-Franklin, weighed in and said his opinion was based on science. “It's a scientific fact males are much stronger (in their) upper body and in the big muscles of the body than the females are," he said. "What we are doing here is attempting to protect the females who would be forced to unfairly compete against males.”
What will happen when the new Tennessee law and the impending actions by other states against the President’s directive occurs is yet to be seen but everybody knows the truth and girls sports, while threatened, is in no danger in the court of the American people.
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BIDEN’S FOLLY WITH GUN LAWS
President Biden has indicated he wants to institute some gun control laws and last week activists called on Biden for action. “I am hopeful this administration is going to get on with prioritizing gun violence, but it’s time to start,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose teenage daughter was murdered by a gunman in 2018, during a mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that the president is “personally committed” but declined to put a timetable on when the White House would unveil its proposal. “He would love to see action on additional gun safety measures to protect families and children and knows there’s support across the American public for that,” she said.
I am not so sure about that. America’s insatiable buying spree for firearms is unprecedented. This just in from USA TODAY: “U.S. gun sales in January surged 60% to 4,137,480,” yes… in one month. “This makes it the largest single month since figures started to be recorded in 1998 … Gun sales in the United States rose 40% last year to 39,695,315. The figure also represents the high-water mark in gun sales since the current record-keeping system went into effect. Increases by state in January varied substantially, as has been the case for years.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks gun sales and publishes a list of how many are handled as part of its National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Each month, the figures are reported by state. Nearly everyone put through this system qualifies as a buyer,” read Wednesday’s USA TODAY story. “People who are excluded usually have criminal records. Of the more than 310 million checks that have been done since 1998, there have only been 1.5 million denials. Therefore, the data is the best proxy for U.S. gun sales available.”
Who bought these guns? CBS News pointed out that over 5 million people were first-time gun buyers last year. CNN reported a sharp rise in sales to black Americans and women. "Sales to women are also up 40% through September when compared with the same period last year," the news network pointed out.
That established, read this Internet missive:
LET’S TALK ABOUT GUN CONTROL
Here's an interesting side bar. After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River. Remember, we had a 2-million-man army and war ships in other localities, so why did they not invade?
After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer … they knew that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them.
Get this …
1. The world's largest army ... America's hunters! I had never thought about this....
2. A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion:
3. There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin.
4. Allow me to restate that number.
5. Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world.
6. That is more men under arms than in Iran.
7. That is more than in France and Germany combined.
8. These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed.
9. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan 's 700,000 hunters …
10. All of whom have now returned home.
11. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that …
12. The hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.
But wait! The number of hunters in the state of Texas would be the largest standing army in the world by itself. (In 2019 there were 1.674 million hunting licenses sold in Texas, and 39.5 million the United States. (Handgun buyers do not typically buy hunting licenses.)
13. The point?
14. America
15. Hunting -- it's not just a way to fill the freezer. It's a matter of national security.
16. That's why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed.
17. Good luck with that.
18. Food for thought when next the Democrats consider gun control.
19. Again, good luck with that.
20. Any attempts in a country that sold 36.9 million new guns last year to establish gun control is not only ain’t gonna’ work, it ain’t about to happen.
royexum@aol.com