Transgender Movement on the March

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday the Colorado Supreme Court, by a wide 5-2 margin, ordered a Colorado children’s hospital to resume transgender treatments and surgeries on minors based on state law, even though the decision could force the hospital to lose its federal funding. The Trump Administration has taken strong action against the transgender movement, yet it marches on.

Last December the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding from facilities that provide transgender treatment to children, but a Biden-appointed federal judge in Oregon named Mustafa T. Kasubhai blocked that rule. Children’s Hospital Colorado had wisely suspended its program of applying hormonal treatments and puberty blockers to children due to the threatened loss of funding.

A lower court upheld the hospital’s decision against a legal challenge. Children’s hospitals depend heavily on federal funding, including their services under Medicaid, and thus ordering the hospital to continue with transgender treatment would do more harm than good.

The practice of medicine is historically regulated by state law, but since health care providers receive billions of dollars of federal funding, the Trump Administration said it would cut federal funding from facilities that continue to perform harmful procedures aimed at altering a child’s gender. Recently the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reversed their guidance on such procedures, urging a delay in transgender surgery prior to the age of 19.

Dominated by federal employees, Virginia has become like Colorado and other blue states in pushing the transgender agenda. When a police officer in Norfolk in southern Virginia objected to orders requiring him to use transgender pronouns, he was ordered to leave, stripped of his gun, suspended, and then fired.

Norfolk has historically been conservative, with many military veterans. It is alarming that police officers in Norfolk have been suspended and even fired for objecting to the use of the women’s locker room by a man purporting to be a transgender woman.

State courts in the mostly conservative states of Kansas and Montana are also imposing the transgender ideology on their residents. In Kansas last Friday, a county judge appointed by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly issued a 117-page injunction against a good Kansas transgender law, which had been passed by the Republican legislature over her veto.

The ACLU brought this lawsuit against the Kansas ban on transgender operations and treatments for children. The county judge blocked the law based on an activist decision by the liberal Kansas Supreme Court, which invented a right of “personal autonomy” to expand abortion there even though those words cannot be found in its 167-year-old state constitution.

Meanwhile, the Montana Supreme Court has rendered multiple Leftist decisions, despite being in a red state that Trump won by 20 points in 2024. On April 14, the 5-2 court held that birth certificates and driver’s licenses must be changed to accommodate transgender demands.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled, based on its state constitution, that state agencies cannot refuse to alter birth certificates and driver’s licenses to accommodate transgender demands. Despite being born male, for example, a resident of the Big Sky Country can now change his birth certificate to state falsely that he was born female instead.

These Kansas and Montana decisions were based on their state constitutions, and the Colorado ruling was based on state law. This reasoning generally shields such decisions from review by the U.S. Supreme Court which, regardless, has avoided review of many important transgender cases that it could have decided.

The 7-2 decision last week by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of abortion pill manufacturers was the result of all three Trump appointees crossing over to the liberal side of the Court, without explanation. Justices Thomas and Alito expressed their dismay at how well-established principles of law were disregarded to allow the continued distribution of the abortion pill without sensible safeguards such as in-person dispensing, and without compliance with a longstanding federal ban on abortion-by-mail.

The entire Democrat Party is lockstep in support of the transgender agenda, due to how Planned Parenthood supplements its revenue by offering transgender treatments. Only a few courts have been willing to defend children against harmful transgender procedures.

The U.S. Supreme Court indicated last year in the Skrmetti case that there is no right to transgender operations and treatments for children under the U.S. Constitution, but this good decision was silent about state constitutions. The Court upheld a law in Tennessee protecting minors against this harm, but this precedent does not protect children against pro-transgender state court decisions based on state law.

Under Skrmetti the federal government can act further to protect children against life-altering procedures and treatments pushed on them by the transgender ideology. In addition to withholding federal funds from facilities that promote transgender treatments, federal regulations could require transparency to the public about which facilities provide these objectionable treatments.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Is Political Feminism Finished?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Political feminism is the push to elect women to high office, such as the U.S. Senate and the Presidency. Two out of the last three Democrat nominees for president have been women, and their campaigns ended in crushing failures.

In Maine, the very formidable two-term Governor Janet Mills appeared to be a shoo-in for the Democrat nomination to run against the incumbent Republican Susan Collins. Kamala Harris won this deep-blue state by 7 points in 2024, and traditionally that margin increases in the midterm elections in favor of the party not in control of the White House.

Mills faced off against Trump himself at an event held for governors at the White House early last year, when Trump called out Maine on the transgender issue. Mills told Trump that she would see him in court, to the thrill of liberals nationwide.

EMILYs List, the preeminent group supporting feminist candidates, praised Mills as “the first woman to be elected as a district attorney in New England,” and the only female attorney general and governor in Maine history. She won her last election in 2022 by 13 points, which was the largest margin for a statewide Democrat there since 1988.

Her opponent is a political newbie named Graham Platner, who is an oyster farmer with a checkered past that includes a Nazi-linked tattoo and posts unsympathetic to women on Reddit. EMILYs List says that “Graham Platner’s comments blaming victims of sexual assault are unacceptable and disqualifying.”

But Platner is a progressive endorsed by Bernie Sanders, the senator for nearby Vermont. Progressives seem to be taking control of the Democrat Party away from liberal feminists.

The latest polling shows Platner with a phenomenal 33-point lead over Mills. Platner is so far ahead for the June 9th primary that he is starting to steer his campaign ads to target his November opponent, Susan Collins, rather than focus on Mills.

Meanwhile, after just a few months on the job the approval rating of Virginia’s new Democrat Governor, Abigail Spanberger, has plummeted below 50%. The pollster State Navigate observes that she is the “most historically unpopular governor at this point in the most recent Virginia governors’ terms.”

The feminist wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is not helping his presidential ambitions. She insists on being called “First Partner" rather than the traditional title of “First Lady,” in order to push the DEI mindset.

She’s accused some Christians of “living in this silo, this evangelical, conservative silo that, ultimately, is just pulling us back as a country to a time and a place where we don't deserve to be, and we’re not going to be.” Her husband tried to shut churches down in California during Covid, while allowing some businesses to remain open, and the Supreme Court ruled against that.

Jennifer Newsom added, “young women and fathers of daughters are awake now, and they’re woke, and they’re not going to let us go back.” Gavin Newsom and his woke wife are struggling in early polling among contenders for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination, trailing behind Kamala Harris who lost last time.

Meanwhile, there is backlash by young men against feminists in South Korea, where birth rates have plummeted to the lowest in the world, thereby endangering the long-term survival of the country. A survey last year found that roughly 50% of men in their 20s and 30s agreed with the statement that “There needs to be a movement that honors masculinity and advocates for men’s rights.”

Over the last half-century feminists have passed many laws that continue to cause harm today. These include programs that profit from turning women against men, and family court procedures that deprive men of their rights of fatherhood.

In 2015 the Obama Administration fully placed women in combat roles in our military. Our ground troops and warships, which are now in harm’s way near Iran, are coed with women and men.

Phyllis Schlafly warned 50 years ago that ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment would result in court-ordered taxpayer-funded abortions, and she successfully blocked that terrible idea from ever becoming part of the U.S. Constitution. Feminists pretended that Phyllis did not know what she was talking about, but time has proven her correct.

On Monday, a 4-3 decision by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ordered taxpayers of our fifth-largest state to start funding abortions there, based on its state ERA. The court used the same contorted logic that Phyllis predicted would be used by feminists to force the public, against the conscience of many, to pay for abortions.

As a state court decision grounded in state law, the U.S. Supreme Court cannot overturn this on appeal. Advocates for ERA back in the 1970s insisted this would not happen, and yet it just did.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Conservative Triumphs Worldwide

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Called “ultraconservative” by the liberal media, Japan’s new prime minister is its first woman ever in that position. But a Japanese feminist author told NBC News that Japan attaining its first female prime minister “doesn’t make me happy.”

Sanae Takaichi takes the reins of power in Japan with strongly conservative positions on gender and marriage. She’s much more like Phyllis Schlafly than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.

Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and is against allowing married woman to keep their maiden name as their last name after marriage. She favors the Japanese tradition of male-only succession in its imperial family.

She is unlikely to support DEI. She will strengthen the Japanese military which would help us by creating a buffer against communist China, and she’ll meet next week with President Trump during his Asia trip.

She has supported tougher immigration policies in Japan. Like Trump, she is an advocate of hard work: “I myself will throw out the term ‘work-life balance.’ I will work and work and work and work and work,” she said.

Her election was made possible by support from the Japan Innovation Party, called Ishin, which the liberal media describe as far-right. The same childless Japanese feminist author, Chizuko Ueno, complained that Takaichi “sees herself as the Japanese version of Margaret Thatcher.”

The issue of women’s rights pales in comparison with the crisis in Japan of its vanishing birth rate. Its population is contracting, falling from 127 million in 2015 to only 123 million today, a trend that will soon be nearly impossible to reverse.

Japan’s population is declining at a rate of 0.5 to 1.5% annually now. That leaves fewer young workers supporting its vast elderly population.

The median age in Japan is 50 years old, meaning that half of its people are aging out of the workforce. By comparison, the median age in Florida as the place of retirement for many Americans is only 43 years old, and in booming Texas, the median age is only 36.

There cannot be economic growth without young workers, and Japan’s real gross domestic product decreased by an annualized 0.2% between the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of this year. Japan is burdened by the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of any developed country, a whopping 240%.

The number of childbirths in Japan dropped in the first half of 2025 by 3.1% from a year ago. A record-low 340,000 babies were born there in the first six months of this year, far too few to sustain its future.

The decline in births there is plummeting even faster than projections. While some blame male traditions in the country, the Japanese people are turning to a conservative woman to try to save them.

Takaichi’s election is part of a trend worldwide which also recently resulted in the first conservative president of Bolivia in 20 years. Rodrigo Paz won a stunning upset against Leftist control of that South American country, and he vows to establish a better relationship with the United States.

This is terrific news as Bolivia is the third-largest producer of illegal cocaine in the world. In 2023 alone, 33 tons of cocaine were seized by anti-drug efforts in that country.

The recent Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an anti-communist in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, who was forced into hiding after the Leftist dictator Nicolás Maduro stole the election from her last year. Machado is widely considered to have won that election for president of Venezuela while campaigning on a platform of getting tough against illegal drugs and improving relations with the U.S.

When the Norway committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, she immediately praised Trump and called him to let him know that he should have won. Machado’s conservative positions are popular in Venezuela, and her campaign rallies drew large crowds just as Trump’s did.

The left-wing political party ruling Great Britain today – the Labour Party – has fallen to a rock-bottom 19% in public support, according to recent polling. This is less than half of its support at the beginning of last year, and the liberal media are distressed at this without understanding why.

Trust in the liberal President of France, Emmanuel Macron, fell to a record-low 14% this month according to a poll funded by the business daily Les Echos. President Trump’s approval rating in the United States is three times higher than that.

In June, Trump-endorsed conservative Karol Nawrocki prevailed in Poland over the liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. The conservative Prime Minister of nearby Hungary, Viktor Orbán, cheered this “fantastic victory.”

Back home, liberals are perplexed by Trump’s growing popularity during the Democrat-induced partial shutdown of the government. To understand better, they should take note of conservative victories sweeping the globe.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

GOP Should Step Up for Men Who Elected Them

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The voting bloc that swung to the Republican side last November to give the GOP control of the White House and Congress was men under 30, who have traditionally voted Democrat by large majorities. They shifted by double-digits from Biden in 2020 to Trump and Republicans in 2024.

But congressional Republicans are doing nothing for young men to retain their support, and they may return to the Democrat Party if this inattention by the GOP continues. For younger men and for fathers who have sons in high school, a top issue is an opportunity to compete in college sports.

Trump issued an executive order last Thursday to warn colleges against eliminating more sports teams in non-revenue, or Olympic, sports. Observing that “the future of college sports is under unprecedented threat,” Trump ordered the protection of college sports that are not money-makers for colleges, which is virtually every sport except football and basketball.

Bipartisan legislation to save college sports, called the SCORE Act, will be debated in the House when it returns after the August recess. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have also teamed up from opposite sides of the aisle in the Senate.

But it is former President Bill Clinton’s Department of Education regulation that makes men’s college sports an endangered species on the verge of extinction. Called the “proportionality test,” it requires that colleges eliminate men’s sports teams until the proportion of men in competitive sports at a college does not exceed the overall percentage of men enrolled in academic classes there.

This quota fails to recognize that an opportunity to play sports is what men look for in deciding whether to go to college, in contrast with the typical reasons why women make that decision. Women’s overall enrollment has increased to 60% at many colleges, so the quota forces cutting men’s teams down to only 40% of sports competitors.

The Olympic sport of men’s wrestling is an example. It is safer than football and better for physical conditioning and weight control, and is booming in high schools now. Participation has increased by 25% since 2022, to attain a record 45-year high of 300,000 boys competing in this high school sport.

A half-century ago there were 155 Division I college men’s wrestling teams, but today there are only 79. That is nowhere near enough to support the demand for wrestling by boys who graduate from high school and are looking to attend college to continue their love of this terrific sport.

Newly elected conservative Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) wrote a letter in February criticizing the decision by Cleveland State University to eliminate its men’s wrestling program. Wrestling is inexpensive, needing only a spongy mat and a coach, and this program was profitable at Cleveland State University as it has been at most colleges that have eliminated it.

“On behalf of my constituents, I would like to have an open and thorough discussion on this matter as many Ohioans, myself included, found this decision disquieting,” Sen. Moreno wrote. He pointed out that the school’s wrestlers had the second-highest GPA among Division I wrestling programs, behind only Harvard.

Save Cleveland State Wrestling brought together alumni, wrestlers at the college, and their parents, and it could easily raise any funds needed for the program. But while colleges never admit this, Bill Clinton’s Department of Education’s proportionality test is usually the real reason that these wrestling programs are eliminated.

Women comprise 55% of the student body at Cleveland State, which means that men’s sports participants can total only 45% of overall participation. Teams that have many members, like wrestling, track, swimming, and baseball, are being eliminated due to Clinton’s misinterpretation of Title IX.

In June, lawfare against the NCAA for additional compensation to college athletes culminated in a $2.8 billion settlement expected to impose enormous new financial burdens on athletic departments that are already stretched thin. This payout, which will enrich attorneys the most, will have the effect of ending many Olympic, non-revenue college teams.

“If you’re trying to stay compliant with Title IX, I don’t know how non-revenue men’s sports aren’t the sports that are more apt to be eliminated,” said Patrick Rishe, the sports business program executive director at Washington University in St. Louis. Recent examples include Grand Canyon University abruptly ending its men’s volleyball program days after it successfully reached the Final Four in the annual national tournament.

Saint Francis’ men’s basketball team was spectacular this year by qualifying for the March Madness tournament, but this college is shifting from Division I to III to avoid the tidal wave of expenses and changes about to hit. It complained that college sports are being taken away from playing for the “love of the game.”

Young men elected Republicans last November, and the GOP should help those who took them to the dance in D.C.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Unhappiness of today's women shows the folly of feminism

Opinion: Unhappiness of today's women shows the folly of feminism

by Anne Schlafly

Fewer American women are married and more women are anxious and depressed. So many are uncoupled and unmarried. Did feminism lead American women to an unhappy state of mind?

In a recent op-ed in the Post-Dispatch (“Once again, women are told they ‘can’t have it all.’ Why not?,” July 10 print edition), Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian defends feminism and attacks conservative women.

Today, a record 25% of all Americans at age 40 have never been married, compared to a mere 6% in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Women have almost twice the rate of depression compared to men, according to the Mayo Clinic. Young women are binge drinking more than their male peers, according to JAMA.

Today the opportunities for women seem limitless. There are no barriers to female achievement. So why are so many women tired, frustrated and alone?

The most important thing that anyone can do in life is to have a successful marriage. The fulfillment that comes from a partner in life is far better than any financial or career success. Marriage does not just happen; success in marriage requires time and attention. For marriage to be a success, the marriage needs to be the priority.

The problem with feminism is that it discounts the meaning of marriage. Feminist ideology told young women that they need a man like “a fish needed a bicycle” — a famous slogan from Gloria Steinem in the 1970s.

But women do need men — and men need women. Humans are social animals who want and need to make the ultimate connection to another person. Do we want an independent life or do we crave a connected life? Of course we want connection and for any connection to happen, women would have to make room in their lives for marriage and children.

Feminism also posits that males and females are interchangeable, but that philosophy denies biology and desire. For example, women and men experience sex in different ways. Most women do not enjoy meaningless sex, but prefer sexual relations in the context of love and romance. Most women desire children. Despite the actress Charlize Theron celebrating her string of one-night stands, most women do not find pleasure in being mistreated and abandoned by a man.

When males started to masquerade as females and invade female spaces, many feminists applauded the transitions. The promotion of transgenderism is proof that feminism is not pro-woman but pro-progressive. Progressives have attacked the few famous feminists (such as Martina Navratilova and J.K. Rowling) who have stood up for women and spoken out against men pretending to be women.

Feminism pushes a one-size-fits-all ideology on young women to abandon their emotional desires. Feminism discounts the importance of men in the lives of women. Feminism is not mainstream, but a far left ideology that seeks to crush the individual in favor of the collective.

Feminism blames “the patriarchy” for all problems, but “the patriarchy” is a straw man that does not exist. Today, nearly half of American women ages 25-34 have a college degree, but only 37% of men in the same age bracket have one, according to the Pew Research Center. No one is holding women back from career success. But feminism still counsels young women not to invest in marriage and family.

Fifty years ago, my mother, Phyllis Schlafly, had to gumption to reject feminism and to speak and write about how feminism leads to unhappy women. Phyllis did “have it all,” but she did it sequentially. Most importantly, she made space in her life for marriage and family. She was very happy.

No one is telling young women that they cannot “have it all”, but no one can possibly have it all at the same time. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. The best advice for young women is recognize that as we age, our priorities life will change.

Schlafly is chairman of Eagle Forum.

From the St. Loius Post-Dispatch

Federal Judges Side with Transgender Agenda

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Tuesday a 2-1 Democrat majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated a good West Virginia law protecting girls’ sports against invasion by male-bodied transgender students. The Richmond-based tribunal held that West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act violates the federal Title IX law, which was enacted to protect girls’ sports, and also that West Virginia’s protection of girls’ sports may further violate the Constitution.

The Biden-appointed judge who wrote this absurd decision repeatedly used the propaganda term “sex assigned at birth,” as if sex were arbitrary and merely “assigned” to a newborn. On the contrary, biological science teaches that sex is determined long prior to birth, and does not change.

The transgender issue is boiling over in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court, after earlier dodging this same transgender case and at least two others, sat on an emergency application by Idaho for an unusually long time of nearly two months before rendering a decision Monday that ducked the substance of a conservative Idaho law.

Two dozen states, including Idaho, have enacted laws protecting children against transgender operations and treatment, while the Supreme Court sidesteps the issue. Most of these laws have been challenged in federal courts by groups pushing the trans agenda, and the day after last Christmas a Clinton-appointed judge ordered a sweeping injunction blocking enforcement of Idaho HB 71.

But rather than affirm the authority of states to protect vulnerable children against irrevocable medical interventions, the Supreme Court instead rendered merely a procedural decision that cautioned against overly broad injunctions. In splintered opinions that Chief Justice Roberts refused to join, the Court reined in the Idaho federal district court without addressing the substance of the law.

There are billions of dollars at stake in profits from medical interventions for transgender purposes, and anyone in higher education who criticizes this lucrative field would risk losing career opportunities. By a wide margin, the most pro-transgender jurisdiction in our country is Washington, D.C., which might explain why the GOP-controlled House and Supreme Court have been so weak on this issue.

Three years ago Arkansas was the first state to ban transgender procedures on children, yet federal courts have still not allowed its good law to take effect. In an en banc sitting of 10 judges on the Eighth Circuit last Thursday to review this law, nearly all of the Republican-appointed judges were unwilling to ask substantive questions of the ACLU attorney for the transgender plaintiff.

With Republican-appointed judges silent as though on the sidelines, the questioning was dominated by the court’s most liberal member, Obama-appointed Judge Jane Kelly, who apparently thinks the Arkansas law somehow discriminates on the basis of sex. Such a ruling by the court would trigger the difficult-to-satisfy standard of heightened scrutiny, by which legislation is typically invalidated.

Leftists who deny sex differences try to invalidate laws they don’t like by concocting arguments that they are discriminatory. Meanwhile the transgender culture holds a grip on D.C., and on most federal courts which depend on liberal law schools for their clerks.

On Friday, the Democrat governor of Kansas vetoed a bill protecting minors against transgender treatments and surgeries, even though a similar bill has passed in half of our country, overriding the governor’s veto in four states. Laws enacted in Kentucky and Tennessee were upheld by an appellate court, while a similar law in Alabama was reinstated by a different appellate court because the district court applied an incorrect standard to block it.

Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the Kansas state senate, but the vote will be close in its state house. The outcome may depend on which legislators happen to be in attendance on the day that an override vote is held there.

Trump held a spectacular rally on Saturday evening in northeast Pennsylvania, considered by Biden to be his backyard where he grew up. There is even a President Biden Expressway in nearby Scranton, although a petition to restore the highway’s original name has attracted 17,000 signatures.

Trump attracted a vast overflow crowd on the chilly evening, withstanding a blustery wind that created challenges for Trump’s airplane to land there. Trump scored many points talking about energy, explaining how Biden’s war on coal and oil have caused runaway inflation and hurt many in Pennsylvania.

Trump courageously spoke out against the trans agenda, and vowed to cut off funding of schools that impose transgender indoctrination on students. Trump included the trans agenda along with critical race theory as propaganda which the federal government should not be funding.

Trump is the first major candidate to pledge to defund schools that mislead our children with transgender and other leftist ideologies. It is increasingly necessary to use the power of the purse to stop the transgender train.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Double Whammy Against the Trans Agenda

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The transgender movement received an unexpected setback from two very different authorities on Monday. Pope Francis, who has been applauded by liberals in many other contexts, declared that efforts to change a person’s biological sex are unacceptable as an affront to human dignity, while the leading association governing sports at 250 small colleges rejected allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports.

This double whammy came as the transgender movement had been riding high. The media had promoted a statement by Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach who led her South Carolina Gamecocks to an undefeated 38-0 championship season, that so-called transgender women (a.k.a men) should be allowed to compete in women’s basketball.

The sport of basketball is a good illustration of how wrong it would be to allow men to invade women’s sports. The best-ever college women’s basketball player, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, is “only” 6 feet tall, but the average men’s basketball player is at least 6-6 and some are over 7 feet tall.

Would that six-inch-plus difference in average height be a fair match-up? Of course not, and no amount of testosterone reduction or other gender changing procedures can offset such an innate disparity between men and women athletes.

The 20-0 vote by the governing body of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) to prohibit biological males from competing in women’s sports is eminently reasonable. The NCAA should soon follow its lead and stop the insanity of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated in 2019 that 1.8% of high school students, or roughly 275,000, disagree with their own biological sex. Thousands of them compete as athletes.

Today a desire for accolades, scholarships, publicity, and lucrative compensation for NIL (name, image, and likeness) motivate millions of athletes. Some would do anything to win, including changing their gender.

The clarity of this new ban on unfair participation by biological men in women’s sports by the NAIA was met with disdain by the liberal media, who have outsized influence over the NCAA and pro sports due to lucrative television contracts. Most NAIA members are Christian colleges, while some are public institutions.

The Pope did not refer specifically to sports, but spoke broadly in general terms to prohibit all transgender interventions: “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”

Officially entitled “Dignitas Infinita,” which is Latin for “Infinite Dignity,” the Vatican announcement was developed over a period of more than five years and reflects many prior papal statements affirming the reality that we are all created male and female. It condemns transgender operations and treatments, as part of its rejection of all modern degradations of human dignity including abortion.

The Pope’s message decries how “in recent decades, attempts have been made to introduce new rights that are neither fully consistent with those originally defined nor always acceptable. They have led to instances of ideological colonization, in which gender theory plays a central role; the latter is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

The reference to gender theory as ideological colonization is a tip of the hat to the booming African churches, which strongly resist efforts today by liberal Europeans and Americans to “colonize” them with leftwing propaganda. African Christians have overwhelmingly rejected social agendas promoted by liberal elites from the U.S. and Europe.

“The greatest possible difference that exists between living beings” is the “sexual difference” between male and female, this papal document confirms. “This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities.”

“It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world,” this Catholic document continues. “All attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected.”

“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” This is a full stop for Leftists, medical universities, and law schools that are pushing hard for transgender operations and treatments, often at taxpayer expense.

In response, Biden’s press secretary reiterated his full support of the transgender agenda. But Biden is on the wrong side of 62 million American Catholics, many Christian colleges, nearly all African churches, and female student-athletes everywhere, and this issue may be one reason why polls show young supporters of Biden fleeing to the Republican side.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Reversing the Birth Rate Decline

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Cultures as different as Italy and South Korea are facing the same crisis: declining birth rates that have fallen far below what is needed to sustain a population and an economy.

Italy just reported another drop in its birth rate to its record low, decreasing by a startling 34.2% since 2008. There were nearly twice as many deaths as births in Italy last year, and the average number of children per woman has declined to only 1.2, far below the 2.1 necessary for a population to survive.

“Every year I look at the birthrates and it’s kind of depressing,” Elon Musk told Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome last year. “One can’t depend on other countries for immigration. Italy is the people of Italy. Please make more Italians.”

South Korea, a prosperous nation with more Christians than any other faith, is in panic mode as its birth rate per woman fell to only 0.72 in 2023 and is projected to fall further this year. The country we saved in the Korean War is on a path to self-destruction by failing to have enough children.

Measures being considered in South Korea are instructive because the United States is on a similar course, as our birth rate has continued to fall since Obama was elected president in 2008. Young women are the demographic most influenced by political ads, and billions have been spent by the Left in promoting every alternative other than starting a family and having children.

CBS News recently reported that a South Korean company Booyoung is providing employees with a bonus of $75,000 for each new child that they parent. South Korean tax law allows companies to treat such bonuses as business expenses up to that amount, while American tax law generally fails to incentivize having and raising children.

Booyoung Chairman Lee Joong-keun candidly predicts that if the birth rate decline in South Korea continues, then “Korea will face a crisis of national existence 20 years from now, including a decline in the economically productive population and a shortage of defense personnel to ensure national security and maintain order.”

The United States is not far behind. The American birth rate declined by nearly 25% between 2008 and 2022, to only about 1.6 per woman today.

Demographic trends are very difficult to reverse, as children from small families tend later to have small families or no children themselves. Political leaders in Italy and many other countries recognize the plummeting birth rates as a crisis.

Taiwan’s birth rate has fallen to only 0.87, far less than half of the 2.1 children per woman needed just to survive long-term. Although a conservative country, Taiwan has turned to liberal approaches such as more government-funded child care, which have never succeeded in boosting the birth rate.

Beginning in 2019, Hungary addressed its declining births by providing a $30,000 loan to newlyweds that is forgiven if they have three children, which makes more sense than Biden’s trillion dollars in student loans. Conservative policies by Viktor Orbán, the pro-Trump leader of Hungary, have increased its birth rate, which used to be the lowest in the European Union when he started and now exceeds the EU average.

Trump and the Republican Party could lead in promoting policies that encourage American families to have more children. Trump himself has a beautiful family with five children and ten grandchildren, and our country would benefit by hearing about pro-family childbearing as a campaign issue.

A pro-birth message fits well with the Republican platform of creating good jobs for Americans, which occurred from 1980 through 2007. The Obama-Biden policy of shipping our jobs to other countries while allowing in a flood of immigrants to take jobs here has been a factor in decreasing our birth rate.

Larger families typically require a good job for the husband as breadwinner in order to create a stable family life. That model, featured in many popular television shows from 1950 through the 1980s, has disappeared in the economy and in Hollywood.

Western liberals, led by then-First Lady Laura Bush, criticized Afghanistan during the U.S. occupation for not sending more women to higher education, but our birth rate is only one-third of Afghanistan’s. By contrast women comprise nearly 60% of U.S. college students, far outnumbering men there while racking up over a trillion dollars in student debt.

Studies show that, on average, the more time that women spend in higher education, the less likely they want to have children. Students are misled into thinking that advancement in educational degrees and corporate America will be more rewarding to them than having children, when it is family life that brings greater long-term benefits.

Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in the world, talks as much about the need to increase the birth rate as he does about own successes. Most world leaders, other than Democrat politicians, agree.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Biden to let Boys Play on Girls Sports Teams

The Biden administration published proposed regulations of sex discrimination in school sports, and I submitted this comment:

The proposal refers to "harm" 53 times, but never identifies the harm accurately. It is considered beneficial to have all-girls sports teams. If that is true, then allowing a boy on a girls team harms every girl on the team, every girl who is displaced, and every girl on opposition teams. The boy with gender disphoria who may identify as a girl is probably harmed as well, as the team would be catering to a dangerous delusion.

Sex is binary in humans. That is a scientific fact. Furthermore, our social order has depended on male-female distinctions for millennia. Attempts to upset that social order are based on an extremist political ideology, and not on popular opinion, law, or benefit to children. The proposed regulations should be rejected.

Here is an interview of a feminist bicycle racing champion who is unhappy about men taking over women's cycling.

21 States Stand Against Militant Transgenders

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Twenty-one states (and counting) stand against the transgender tidal wave by enacting legislation to protect families, vulnerable children, girls’ sports, and the right not to use a transgender pronoun. A new Tennessee law clarifies “sex” as “a person's immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”

Pro-transgender marketing for Bud Light beer backfired badly on the Belgian-based beer giant AB InBev. Sales for Bud Light decreased by 21% for the week ending on April 22, a third consecutive weekly decline following the company’s disastrous attempt to reposition that iconic product by insulting its traditional customer base.

President Biden’s poll numbers have also dropped sharply, to a new low of 36% from 42% only three months ago, while he pushes the unpopular transgender agenda. Biden has only 26% approval among the essential voting demographic of voters under 30.

The next three weeks will mark the climax of the biennial Texas legislature, which must adjourn by law on May 29. Militant transgender protesters and parliamentary delay tactics by their allies in the Texas state house twice blocked a key vote last week on a good bill protecting against harmful transgender child treatments, which had already passed the state senate.

While the mostly peaceful Trump supporters who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 received stiff prison sentences as long as 14 years, favorable publicity showers the transgender militants who disrupted the Texas Capitol. Charges have even been dropped against one transgender protester accused of assaulting an officer there, in sharp contrast with the over prosecution of Trump supporters in D.C.

The transgender activists in Texas were interfering with a vote on SB 14, which would ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy in children. Similar laws protecting children from irreversible treatments and mutilation have passed in 16 states, while 8 states have prohibited persons from using bathrooms of the opposite sex.

But 10 states are moving in the opposite direction, having enacted laws to promote the transgender agenda, even requiring conscientious physicians to provide medical interventions that violate traditional ethical principles. The militant transgenders have enormous financial and political backing as they try to enact their agenda nationwide.

Detransitioners, those who regret being victimized by transgender treatments or operations as children, are suing for the harm inflicted on them. One such lawsuit is against Kaiser Permanente for putting a 13-year-old girl on puberty blockers and testosterone, and then performing a double mastectomy at age 15, who by age 16 wanted to restore her life as a girl.

Despite the many lives being wrecked by transgender medications, the media show us confused kids who want transgender operations or seek to play on a sports team of the opposite sex. Armed with free attorney services from liberal entities, new lawsuits challenge state laws protecting girls’ bathrooms and sports.

Unfortunately, courts are likely to block some of these good state laws, as law schools keep turning out pro-transgender attorneys. The U.S. Supreme Court signaled its unwillingness to defend state laws that protect girls’ sports, when last month it denied a petition from West Virginia to reinstate its law.

Also stalled in the Texas House is a bill to protect women’s college sports, SB 15. The obstacle there appears to be opposition by the pro-transgender NCAA, which insists on using only testosterone tests as a way to pretend to protect women’s sports.

Testosterone tests are inadequate because even if the male hormone is artificially reduced, men still inherently have immense physical advantages over female athletes. For example, the average male is 5 inches taller than the average female, which gives men a decisive margin in many sports including swimming and track and field events.

The average height of players in women’s professional basketball is only 6 feet, while the corresponding average for a man in the NBA is 6 feet 6 inches. Leveling testosterone will not even out that disparity, or other sex differences such as how males are much less vulnerable to sports injuries than women and girls.

Last week a transgender athlete won a women’s cycling event recognized by the world cycling authority. While some international sports authorities are belatedly beginning to change their rules, the top American sports leagues beholden to television contracts with the liberal media are not budging.

Democrat Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sides with girls, women, and Trump against allowing males to compete in female sports. But Biden recently issued Title IX regulations that will be used by liberal courts to invalidate state laws protecting girls’ sports against the transgender invasion.

Biden supports extremism in the transgender movement, which is where the media wants him to be. With rock-bottom approval ratings, Biden cannot win renomination without continued backing by the pro-transgender media.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.