The transgender battle being waged before the U.S. Supreme Court is not one that defies definition or interpretation.
Macy Petty, a former NCAA volleyball player who once played against a man who identifies as transgender, told CBN News this week that the fight to protect the sanctity of women’s sports is “essentially a spiritual battle,” alluding to Ephesians 6:12.
Her comments came as the high court’s nine justices heard oral arguments for and against two laws (one in West Virginia and one in Idaho) aimed at banning men who identify as transgender from participating in women’s sports teams.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this year on whether these bans violate Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. The decision will have national implications in dozens of states.
The judges’ exchanges and comments regarding this matter quickly attracted attention.
“We’re currently looking at the definition of a girl and saying only those assigned as girls at birth are eligible,” said Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed in 2022 by former President Joe Biden.
And in an exchange with ACLU attorney Kathleen Hartnett, Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by then-President George W. Bush in 2006, asked, “Don’t we need to understand what it means to be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman?”
Ms. Hartnett, arguing on behalf of a transgender student from Idaho who was barred from competing on Boise State University’s track and field and cross country teams, answered Mr. Alito in the affirmative.
The judge then asked Hartnett, “for purposes of equal protection,” to define what it means to be male and female. An ACLU lawyer replied: “There is no definition.”
Alito’s response was, “How can a court determine whether there is discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what ‘sex’ means?”
Hours before the high court began oral arguments on the Idaho and West Virginia laws, Petty, a legislative analyst for Concerned Women for America, told CBN News that she and her organization believe the issue is “much bigger than politics” and is fundamentally a “spiritual battle.”
“God created us in his own image, male and female,” she said, referring to Genesis 1:27. “And there is something beautiful about that and the way God created us. It tells the beautiful story of the Gospel, the most incredible story ever told. But it is a threat to those who hate God. They want to reject not only God as Creator, but also the way God reveals Himself through creation, like male and female (dualism).”
She continued, “We consider it a great privilege that the Lord is using us within this organization to fight this program of pure evil.”
In addition to publicly advocating for women’s sports, Petty has worked behind the scenes to promote the protection of women’s spaces in athletics. She was one of the signatories of a court brief supporting a law that would ban men who identify as women from competing on women’s sports teams.
“I consider it a great honor and blessing,” she said of signing the brief. “It’s incredible to see how that brief has grown since[I first signed it]. When I first signed it, there were only about five or six people, and now there are so many people – dozens of female athletes, Olympians, parents, doctors.
You can watch the full interview with Petty in the video embedded above.
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