The president of Houghton University on Monday called for an end to transgender athletes participating in female sports, saying it defies nature and blurs the fundamental distinction between the sexes.
Dr. Wayne D. Lewis Jr., the sixth president of the private university in upstate New York, detailed his defense of women’s collegiate athletics in a statement noting Houghton is a Christian liberal arts college before qualifying his stance as not a religious one.
Rather, it’s a moral position that it’s simply wrong to allow males to take over girls’ and women’s sports, just as other sports organizations have already made clear.
“Biological males’ participation in women’s athletics is wrong,” wrote Lewis, the first African-American president of the university.
“Most Americans and most of the world know it to be wrong. A fringe agenda under the guise of making school and collegiate athletics more inclusive for transgender people has grown to the place of now unfairly displacing gifted and hardworking female athletes, obliterating the historic achievements and records of female athletes of the past, and threatening to dismantle the opportunities and protections for girls and women in sport trailblazing leaders fought so hard to create and protect.”
“Too many leaders, parents, professional athletes, and people of goodwill have been silent as female athletes are humiliated, silenced, and robbed of hard-earned opportunities. That silence is complicit with the fringe agenda that threatens to dismantle girls’ and women’s athletics.”
To conclude his statement, Lewis looked for broader community support.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “I will not sit by silently as a university president whose female student-athletes step weekly onto tracks, courts, and fields to compete but, in some cases, are forced to do so on playing fields we know to be unfair. I hope you will join me.”
Lewis’s statement comes after the All-Atlantic Regional Championships in track and field, where transgender athlete Sadie Schreiner of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) won the women’s 200-meter dash, Fox News notes.
He adds his voice to an issue already dividing a host of sports around the world.
Last month officials of Nassau County, New York, also bucked the liberal establishment of the state after moving to place a ban on men competing as women in the sports facilities the county controls.
County Executive Bruce Blakeman says the ban is intended to protect the integrity of women’s sports, as Breitbart News reported.
“What we are saying here today with our executive order is that if a league or team identifies themselves or advertises themselves to be a girls or women’s league or team, then biological males should not be competing in those leagues,” Blakeman said.
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