The women fighting to protect the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution’s female-only membership received another blow this week after DAR President General Ginnie Sebastian Storage refused chapters’ requests for a special session to vote on the definition of “woman.”
The August 6 rejection, published to the DAR Members’ Website and distributed to members by at least one state regent, suggests DAR national leadership, led by Storage, is committed to accommodating men at the expense its members, including thousands of whom departed over the DAR’s years-long abandonment of its female-centric mission.
“The National Society’s representative body has already fully considered and decided the proposed resolution,” Storage wrote. “Article VIII does not require the President General to convene that body only months later to take another vote on the identical resolution. Accordingly, no additional special meeting will be convened.”
Storage acknowledged that the requests for a special session stemmed “from chapters that previously sought an October special meeting, as well as requests from some additional chapters.” She concluded, however, that indulging those requests “is neither required by the National Bylaws nor consistent with the governance responsibilities of the President General” after the national society vote earlier this year.
A previous attempt to limit membership to those “born female” was defeated 1,481 to 984 at the DAR’s 135th Continental Congress in Washington, D.C., in June, after voting members were handed what Laura McDonald, treasurer of the Martha Laird DAR chapter in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and founder of the Daughters Advocating for Restoration, called a “one-sided legal memo” that insinuated “the DAR does not have a First Amendment Right to define membership eligibility.” The Center for American Liberty previously confirmed that the DAR “would have a strong First Amendment defense” for exclusively admitting women to its ranks.
Storage was quick in her August 6 message to remind DAR members “That decision was made by the representative body authorized under the National Bylaws to act for the National Society. Neither the National Board of Management nor the President General determined the outcome of the vote.”
McDonald told The Federalist in June, however, that the vote was originally supposed to happen at an October special meeting. Instead, the DAR’s National Board of Management “added this as an agenda item for Continental Congress, bypassing the requirement that 100 percent of the membership must be notified about this resolution.”
Storage pretended to address this claim by explaining in her latest letter that notice was given, but acknowledged it was only “by email to voting members of the 135th Continental Congress and by posting on the Members’ Website.”
“Although that consideration occurred as the Special Order of Business rather than at a separately convened special meeting, the representative body was afforded the same opportunity to consider, debate, and decide the proposed resolution as it would have received at the requested special meeting,” Storage insisted.
McDonald and the dozens of DAR chapters that tried for years to reject the transing of their female-only organization by proposing amendments requiring proof of sex with an original birth certificate or DNA testing mourned the vote and strategized to get a special session on the calendar in the fall. Storage, however, followed the vote with a reminder to members that “the decision of the voting members reflects the considered judgment of the membership assembled at the Continental Congress, and it deserves our respect.”
“To any member who has felt discouraged or unwelcome: you are, and remain, a valued Daughter,” Storage wrote.
Storage is a member of the pro-trans Facebook group Daughters for Inclusivity which worked to defeat the resolution. She later “loved” the post of a self-described “trans daughter” from her personal Facebook account.
Even before Storage assumed her presidency, the DAR actively worked to shut down discourse about protecting its membership from male infiltrators. In one 2024 letter, the DAR claimed to the Nevada Sagebrush Chapter that limiting membership to females only is not “suitable subject matter for inclusion in the bylaws and is not in the best interests of the society.” In another internal DAR document obtained by The Federalist, DAR leadership insisted “a transgender woman is not a man” and is “also not a man simply dressed as a woman.”
The DAR’s refusal to honor its mission to create a society “that would harness a desire for service that would help usher in the progressive era in the United States and create a legacy for future generations of women” has prompted backlash not only inside the DAR, but from politicians. Sen. Marsha Blackburn introduced legislation in July that seeks to prohibit males from DAR membership.
