A Republican candidate for state Senate has launched a campaign to ban competition between biological men and women who identify as transgender, and other GOP candidates are expected to follow suit.
Gina Arena, a mother of six girls and running for Congress in the 40th Congressional District in the southern Hudson Valley, said the “Equal Rights” amendment proposed on the November ballot would allow transgender athletes to compete alongside women.
She is now putting up “Save Girls’ Sports” lawn signs throughout the district and is supporting a new campaign called “Save Girls’ and Women’s Sports.”
Arenas is facing off against incumbent Democratic Sen. Peter Harckham in a district that includes Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. In a close race two years ago, Arenas won with 47% of the vote against Harckham.
“New York state has shamefully become a national leader in discriminating against women and girls in sports, and that is unacceptable,” Arenas said in a statement.
“A recent poll showed that 66 percent of New Yorkers want to keep women’s sports the way they are, yet radical progressives like my opponent, State Senator Pete Harckham, think they know better than the rest of us.”
Senator Harckham voted to put the proposed amendment, known as Proposition 1, to the vote in the Senate.
The proposition asks voters whether they support or oppose adding language to the Constitution stating that “people cannot be denied the rights of others because of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, the consequences of a pregnancy, reproductive health care, or autonomy).”
A “Yes” vote would enshrine these anti-discrimination provisions in the New York State Constitution.
A “NO” vote would remove these protections from the Constitution.
The language protecting abortion rights attracted the most attention.
But Republican strategists said many voters, and even candidates, are unaware that when it comes to competitive sports, the proposed constitutional amendment would protect transgender people at the expense of women.
Republican candidates will likely make the transgender sports ban an issue, said John Faso, a former Republican congressman and adviser to state GOP Chairman Ed Cox.
“Many Republican candidates [the proposal]”This amendment also violates parental rights,” Faso said.
Nassau County recently approved a bill that would reinstate a ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s and girls’ sports played at county-owned athletic facilities, but state Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit last month to block the ban, arguing it violates the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The Coalition to Protect New York’s Children, which opposes the amendment, plans to hold several press conferences in New York City’s Town Hall Park, Binghamton, East Elmhurst in Queens and Rochester on Monday, National Women’s Equality Day, to “stand against discrimination against women in sports.”
“This is a bizarre and disingenuous interpretation of the New York State Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), but it is not surprising given Gina Arenas’ Moms for Freedom roots. The ERA does just that – guarantees equal protection under the law to all New Yorkers. Nothing in the ERA provides for this. Gina’s scapegoating of a minority of transgender children is hateful and unacceptable,” Harckham’s campaign said.
Pro-ERA group New Yorkers for Equal Rights argues the referendum does not explicitly address transgender participation in women’s sports.
“New Yorkers will see through these blatant lies and we will win in November. No matter how many billboards anti-abortion extremists buy, New Yorkers know the truth: Proposition 1 protects our fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to abortion,” the group said.
Pro-vote groups have previously argued that the amendment would not take away parents’ rights.
