Lucas: Democrats lack common sense on trans athlete ban
President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning men from women’s sports the other day, and he thought it was good.
But nobody from Massachusetts did.
They all voted against it. Not the executive order, that is, although they would have if they could have.
What the Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House, all Democrats, did do was to vote against the companion bill banning men from playing in women’s sports when it passed on a 218 206 vote.
All nine Massachusetts members of the House voted against it.
In other words, they voted to allow men to continue to compete with women in women’s sports despite common sense, injuries to girls and overwhelming public opinion that they be denied.
That bill, called “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” is pending in the Senate and is expected to pass and be sent to Trump for his signature. Both Massachusetts Democrat Sens Elizabeth Warren and Eddie Markey are also expected to vote against it.
Whatever Trump is for, they are against, no matter what.
In this case, as well as in others, like illegal immigrant crime, the Democrats, desperate to find relevance, are on the wrong side of the issue, the wrong side of history and the worn side of common sense.
Unlike a presidential executive order, which can be overturned by the next president, it would take legislation and presidential approval to negate this legislation. In other words, the law reinforces the executive order.
But Trump did not wait for the bill but signed the executive order at the White House anyway. Titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” Trump signed it front of a grateful and adoring crowd of girls, female teenagers and adult women.
Surrounded by young girls, Trump, as is his habit, signed the executive or with a flourish and gave out a dozen signing pens to the happy children around him. And he did it on National Girls and Women in Sports Day
“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared.
Under the executive order and the pending legislation, the government can withhold federal funds from public elementary and secondary schools, as well as colleges, which do not comply with the order.
Just as the Massachusetts progressive delegation to the House, with one exception— Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston— voted as a group against the Laken Riley Act, which allows for the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants, they all voted against banning men in women’s sports.
Voting against the protection of women bill were Lynch and Reps. Richard Neal of Springfield, James McGovern of Worcester, Lori Trahan of Westford, Jake Auchincloss of Newton, Katherine Clark of Revere, Seth Moulton of Salem, Ayanna Pressley of Boston and William Keating of Bourne.
What stands out are the votes of Moulton and Trahan.
It was Moulton following Donald Trump’s wipeout of Kamala Harris, who criticized Democrats for being out of touch with the voters and thus losing the election.
He criticized the Democrat Party’s support of the issue of biological men playing in women’s sports, which Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats endorsed.
“I have two little girls,” Moulton said after the election. “I don’t want them to get run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But I’m not supposed to say that.”
After blowback from progressives for deviating from party progressive policy, Mouton changed his tune and voted against the bill banning men from women’s sports. He said the bill was “extreme” in that it undermined “civil rights protections for transgender Americans.”
Trahan won a high school volleyball scholarship to Georgetown University when women did not compete with men in volleyball or sports in general. She released a statement on National Girls and Women in Sports Day touting her support for girls and women in sports even as she voted against the bill.
She said the bill would “impose a federal takeover of sports, a move that would ban the participation of transgender children in sports.”
Like diminutive Gov. Maura Healey starring in Harvard basketball competing against women only, it is highly unlikely that Trahan would have gotten a scholarship to Georgetown had she played volleyball against men, and not girls.
Democrats have it all backwards.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
