The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue Montana if it passes a bill that would require publicly funded education institutions to designate sports teams according to participants’ sex. The “Save Women’s Sports Act” would allow for male, female, and coed teams, but not for males to participate on teams designated for females.
On the basis of Joe Biden’s executive order demanding that all publicly funded institutions transgender all sex-based activities and facilities, and the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, both the Montana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the national organization promised to sue Montana if it passes any law recognizing that men and women are different. Bostock claims the word “sex” also means “gender identity” in federal law forbidding discrimination based on sex, although the concept of gender identity did not exist when the law was passed and it is logically incompatible with the reality of sex.
The Montana House passed the bill 61-38 on Jan. 27, and sent it to the state Senate. Writer Abigail Shrier highlighted the ACLU threat to Montana on Twitter.
The Montana ACLU chapter also tweeted (HB112 is the Save Women’s Sports Act):
ACLU national staff lawyer Chase Strangio, who is transgender, also tweeted threats against the Montana legislature’s right to make laws on behalf of the people who elect them instead of laws that please unelected, out-of-state transgender activists:
Carpe Diem, Conservatives
Republican state legislators should realize what a huge boon it is for them to be cast as the only thing standing between transgender totalitarians like the national ACLU and the voters of Montana. This is an excellent opportunity for them to fundraise and push Montana, long a purple state, into redder territory for years to come. Opposition to transgenderism is a bipartisan wedge issue that plays well for Republicans who are willing to earn more voters and stronger voter loyalty by effectively standing for basic human rights and sexual sanity.
In Montana, the majority of even Democrat voters don’t buy the ridiculous idea that men and women are fair sports competitors, or that a man can turn into a woman. Most Montana Democrats vote blue because they are blue-collar, not for ridiculous white-collar leftist ideology to infect their lives and ruin their communities’ after-school fun.
This is not a theoretical or small-time debate even if almost no transgender males join female sports teams, or if the ones who do rarely beat that many women. It is about getting people to kiss the ring and pretend they believe what they know is false. It is about subjugating people’s understanding of reality to prepare society for increased totalitarianism.
Every single one of us needs to understand the stakes here are not at all about a few trans kids playing on opposite-sex sports teams, or showering next to kids of the opposite sex somewhere. The obvious reality that men and women are different in meaningful ways that require us to treat them differently in some contexts is a hill to stake a claim on and refuse to budge no matter the outcome. This is a cultural sanity touchstone and human rights issue.
As Ryan Anderson points out, “Children feeling discomfort with their bodies shouldn’t be told the lie that they’re ‘trapped in the wrong body,’ nor should adults pump them full of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.” If decent people and public officials, such as Bostock author Justice Neil Gorsuch and Senate Republicans, are unable to successfully defend and advance obvious truths like these to end publicly funded child mutilation, our civilization is over.
The education of the young is also an existential challenge for a nation, and Americans have let the left control it for far too long. Here’s a strategic gameplan for using the Biden administration’s overreach on this issue as an opportunity to win more voters to the right and restructure U.S. public education to function less as leftist recruiting and indoctrination centers.
What State Legislatures Should Do
The only way any president can claim to demand that public schools affirm an obvious lie is that public schools get about 10 cents of every dollar they spend through the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind. Without this money, no president could impose insane ideas on American schools, whether the idea is transgender showers, critical race theory, anti-American history, or Common Core.
So congressional Republicans need to pledge to voters that if they ever regain Congress they will pass the A-PLUS Act (or something even stronger) to block-grant states’ education funds back to them with no federal strings attached. In the meantime, state legislatures should follow this general strategy to end any president’s ability to humiliate their citizens by forcing them to pretend men and women are interchangeable. Here’s one way state legislatures can do that.
1. Commission a study on federal funding. Any fair study will find that federal funds cost more than they bring in, in compliance, funding federal lobbyists’ priorities instead of local priorities, memberships in public-private organizations that exist to launder federal funds, reorienting state money from state priorities to federal priorities, etc.
2. Use the results of the study to reject federal education funding. If legislators have balls, they should also refuse to collect the taxes from state residents that fund the U.S. Department of Education (based on the annual ESSA funding formulas). Let the feds come get their extortion money on their own. Your state doesn’t have to assist with mafia government.
3. Do a complete overhaul of the state education bureaucracy and funding to reorient it towards local needs. Axe all state, regional, and local bureaucracies whose purpose is to launder federal money and promote compliance with federal priorities.
4. Investigate the needs of poor and special-needs children and whether they are being met with the state funds allocated to them. You will find that they are not. As a result, sponsor and pass education savings accounts for these children. Expand these accounts to all children in the state on the grounds that no public school should be allowed to hold children hostage to ideology their parents don’t want.
Expect massive resistance from these bureaucracies and their allies like unions and administrators’ groups. Prepare to disregard their pressure and take your case to the much larger and more sympathetic voters, who also cannot see any use in a bi-regional curriculum supplement planning district negotiation authority.
Your case is simple: I want the maximum dollars steered towards classrooms. That’s children and teachers. Only half of education dollars right now actually go to children. I want that amount up to at least 75 percent. The federal government not only uses the money it gives to force boys into girls’ showers, its rules actually take more state money from classrooms and give it to bureaucrats, so teachers are underpaid and children don’t have the resources they need. I refuse to let that happen.
This is an easy public sell based on true facts.
Lastly, any judges who help impose transgender ideology on states against their citizens’ expressed wishes should be censured, impeached, recalled, and otherwise kicked out of office. Depending on the state, this is a job for both legislatures and citizens.
What Individuals and Their Friends Should Do
Here is a gameplan to help motivate your state legislature, local school board, state school board, local athletics organizations, and others to stand up for reality, truth, women, girls, boys, and men. Montana should not be the only state legislature passing this kind of law. They all should. Every single school district and college should be pressured to not allow rapey situations like boys cosleeping with girls and in their showers.
1. Get the Facts
Print out a copy of Biden’s executive order. Circle or highlight the most pertinent portions and create a “cheat sheet” of quotes from the source documents to be used in op-eds, Facebook posts, complaints to school boards, emails to local friends, etc.
Also collect three to five articles and videos about the executive order to share with all these sources. Keep the number small and targeteds. Here are some suggestions from The Federalist’s recent publications:
Biden Order:
- “Biden Orders Nationwide Cover-Up Of Differences Between Men And Women In Orwellian Crusade For ‘Equality’“
- “How Joe Biden Will Open The Floodgates To Transgendering Public Schools“
- “When Chivalry Dies, Women Suffer“
Supreme Court’s Bostock decision laying groundwork for Biden order and following similar reasoning:
- “SCOTUS’s Transgender Ruling Firebombs The Constitution“
- “Supreme Court: Treat Men And Women As Interchangeable, Or Get Sued Into Oblivion“
- “LGBT Lawyers Already Using Supreme Court Ruling To Demand Hysterectomies For Men“
- “Gorsuch’s Ruling Demands Employers Allow Sexual Harassment“
- “Supreme Court Ridiculously Demands Everyone Pretend Sex Differences Don’t Exist“
2. Analyze the Power Structure
Next, you and any friends and local political allies need to find every single public and private official in your spheres of influence who will be affected by this order and the underlying Supreme Court decision. Find and write down each one’s name, contact information, and constituents in a spreadsheet or word processing document. Include a column for their stance on this issue — you’ll use it later. Public officials’ contact information should be available with a DuckDuckGo search, looking at their government webpage, or searching by their name and town on WhitePages.com.
Here is a comprehensive but not exhaustive potential list of all the leaders you need to identify this information for:
- Every principal of every public school in your school district
- All the school board members in your school district
- Your mayor
- Your local town and/or county council
- All local public higher education institutions — state universities, community colleges,
- The board and chancellor or principal of all private education institutions that you have any relation to, as a graduate, donor, member of a related church, etc.
- Your state legislators
- Your governor and lieutenant governor
- Your state’s board of education
- All members of your state legislature’s education committees
- All members of boards of regents and other public overseers of every government higher education institution in your state
- All local sports coaches
- The leaders of state athletics organizations — the state and local Little League chapters, the state and local NCAA organizations, local and regional sports coaches, etc.
- All in-state religious organizations, including denominations, pastors of all local churches you and your friends have relationships with, the leaders and boards of regents of all seminaries in your city or state, the local Catholic Church diocesean and other leaders, etc.
- The leaders or contact persons for any local Bible study groups, parachurch religious organizations, and other networks of local religious people
- Leaders of all local, regional, and state Republican political organizations (i.e. the Republican Party chair in your town or county, and the Republican Party apparatus in your state)
- Leaders of all local, regional, and state Democrat political organizations (i.e. the Democrat Party chair in your town or county, and the Democrat Party apparatus in your state)
- Any leaders of local or in-state feminist organizations
You don’t need to necessarily list all of these, although more is better. Just think of who you know and what networks those you know may be in touch with (like a friend who goes to another church and could reach out to a pastor besides yours, or someone who is an engaged alumni of a certain college or seminary). Or start small and just pick one specific target — your local school, local school board, state legislators, local churches in your denomination, etc.
3. Amass or Join Local Activists
Now that you have a list of people to reach out to, you need people to handle outreach to them with your message. These can be your local political friends, members of local political or religious groups you’re a part of, whoever you can find who is willing to put some time into this.
Although more is better, you only really need a few people. It can be you, your mother, and your grandmother. Anyone who can write an email or make a phone call and follow a script.
Once you find several helpers, hold a meeting or a conference call where your group performs two jobs: fill out your power map as explained in No. 2 above; and come up with a short script for emailing or calling each of these people. The script can be tweaked to fit the specific recipient and situation, but it helps guide your outreach and make it effective.
A sample script might look something like:
Greeting: Hi, Bob!
Identification: I’m Jane Smith, a mom who lives in [city]. I’m calling/emailing because I understand you’re a [public title], right?
Reason for call/email: I’m calling you about this new executive order from President Biden that requires [kind of institution] to [end girls’ sports, put boys in girls’ bathrooms, take away scholarships from female athletes, etc.]. I’m very concerned about it. It does [name bad consequences that really bother you].
Say what you want the person to do: I represent local voters and parents who think this is really wrong and harmful, and we’d like to know what is your plan for responding to this executive order in a way that [protects girls’ and boys’ privacy / recognizes that it’s impossible to delete someone’s XX or XY chromosomes / makes sure children will never have their genitals mutilated using taxpayer institutions and dollars in our state or city / uses your influence to make a public stand against this outlandish imposition on our city or state / generate public support for protecting vulnerable women, girls, and boys].
Wait for a response, don’t say anything even if the silence gets awkward, and record whatever the response is.
Besides making email and phone contact like this, you should also write down all upcoming public meetings or events — even if they’re on Zoom and even if they are months in the future — that involve any of the leaders you have identified. This would include meetings of your church council or voter’s assembly, parent-teacher meetings, school board meetings, local politician townhalls, townhalls with elected officials, and the like. You are going to go to these and raise this issue there also.
4. Pressure Every Leader
Now that you have your script and list of people to contact with it, do it. Divide up the list among your helpers and use the script to contact all of them. Record the responses in your list. Get every leader at every level of responsibility to go on the record with his or her stance on this issue.
When someone responds favorably to your inquiry, ask him or her to also recommend others to call and email about this issue and help put you in touch. Ask him or her to help expand your efforts. Make an email list of every person your team encounters who is on your side, and keep that email list apprised of every new development about this topic. If you get several favorable responses from folks in a specific category, such as sports coaches or local pastors, ask them to write and publicly release a group statement about this issue.
Ask each person specifically what he or she is going to do to address this problem. Don’t let him or her pass the buck to someone else. Every person with authority over some institution can do something. Lawmakers can pass laws, people in charge of schools can refuse to comply, organizations and networks of people can help expand the people and organizations putting pressure on local leaders to reject this utterly insane executive order.
Those who refuse to answer or who go on record as being unwilling to use their authority to affirm the obvious reality that males and females are physically different should be named and shamed for this decision, using video of them doing it if possible.
If you are asking a school board or state lawmaker in a public forum what he or she is going to do to protect kids from transgender ideology, record the exchange. Use your phone’s camera, record the screen of a virtual meeting, get an audio recording, write up a transcript of what the person says in response, whatever. I think video is the best medium to use, but if it isn’t possible, write down and publicize quotes and stances.
When you go to put people on the record in person in public forums, write out a script for what you are going to say there also. Consider role-playing and practicing giving your prepared talking points and questions for public officials before you go. (Keep the script very short — a max of two minutes. Don’t prepare a lecture.) It will help you feel confident, stick to what you really want to say without getting pushed around, and put the ball in the public officials’ court.
5. Publicize What You Learn
Every time a public official takes a stance on this issue — or refuses to — publicize it, whatever the response is. Publish the response you got in a phone call. Post the video to Facebook and YouTube and have your friends share it like mad. If your Facebook and YouTube posts are censored, start your own blog and share the links via email and texting. Put up posters on telephone poles if you have to.
Send the videos and quotes to local newspapers and blogs. Send them to people who have a large local following on Facebook. Text a video link to all your local friends and ask them to forward it to all THEIR local friends. Blast the airwaves with every channel you can get or make. If things get wild on the ground to the point it would be a good national story, send The Federalist the details and we’ll write about it too (info@thefederalist.com).
Make sure to share the public contact information of all officials named so readers can write or call also and either thank and support them or politely ask them to change their minds.
6. Have an End Game for Favorable Responses
You need to have a planned response to every likely reaction you’ll face when canvassing public officials. Plan ahead for what your team will do when someone responds favorably (ask him to use their authority to push back on Biden’s edict; publicize her stance and ask for public support), unfavorably (publicize her stance and ask for public disapproval; consider primary challenges and finding a good opponent for his next election); and on the fence (offer more information, ask for a meeting in person to present it and talk it over, then get useful people such as pastors and representatives of local voting blocs to privately contact them with more information and to ask them to join the right side).
You also need to have an end goal in mind for all this activity. It will differ by entity. For example, with a state legislature or city council, your end goal is legislation that secures sexual privacy and recognizes human sex distinctions as meaningful. It is also for legislation that gives school choice to parents whose local public schools are locking their children into this leftist brainwashing. It is also for states to reject federal control over local classrooms by defenestrating federal money and the strings that come with it.
It is to defund and defrock all institutions and officials that continue to pressure Americans to accept lies about sex: all schools, workplaces, women’s shelters, prisons, judges, elected officials, and others. Run them out of office. Cut off all taxpayer funds and special preferences for such entities — no state contractors or other recipient of state funds may allow men into women’s spaces. Divest, defund, and sanction.
With a local school board or board of regents, your goal is for the individual school to refuse to transgender its curriculum and practices. If they refuse, you go over their heads and demand they lose funds and public support. Not a single public resource should back this insanity.
This is a multiyear project. It is not only about transgendering schools. It is about responding to the left’s long fight to force Americans into an identity politics regime that is at war with the constitutional government our founders bequeathed that has made us the world’s premiere civilization. They spent more than a century to deliberately destabilize it, and it will take us perhaps that long to restore some of its former glory.
The time and place to start is now, and here, or it will never happen, and the country we love is truly lost. Godspeed!
