As President Joe Bidenâs administration seeks to grant men claiming to be female the right to compete as Women in Womenâs Sports, one of the Women who lost to trans swimmer Lia Thomas, Riley Gaines, is speaking out against Thomasâ plea for the administration to follow through.
In an Instagram video released Tuesday, Thomas â a mediocre menâs swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania under the name Will Thomas who began winning big after he began hormone treatments and qualified under NCAA rules to compete as a woman â said âit breaks my heart to see trans kids lose out on opportunitiesâ in states that ban men and boys from competing in Womenâs and girlsâ Sports.
In the video, Thomas said swimming had given him âso many opportunities to learn, grow and connect with my peers â opportunities that I wouldnât have gotten if I didnât have access to athletics.â
Which, of course, he still had â even after he became a lightning rod for trans rights by meeting rules for âtransitioningâ to female under NCAA guidelines, causing controversies even among his female teammates at UPenn.
Numerous states have acted to ban boys and men from competing in girlsâ and Womenâs Sports at the school level. The Biden administration is preparing to do away with this by having the Department of Education amend Title IX to eliminate those bans â something Thomas is supporting in a major way.
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Gaines, a former All-American swimmer for the University of Kentucky, tied Thomas for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Womenâs championships â and watched as the sole trophy was given to a man.
She has become one of the most vocal and visible critics of the Transgender athletic agenda. Appearing on Piers Morganâs TalkTV show Tuesday, she said the flawed logic in Thomasâ video was revealing if you replaced just one little word in her heart-rending plea.
âThe first sentence you said, I believe it was, Lia Thomas quoted, saying, âIt breaks my heart to see trans kids lose out on opportunities,'â Gaines said. âYouâre exactly right. Replace that with the word âwoman.â
âDoes it still break Thomasâ heart to see Women lose out on opportunities? Because thatâs exactly whatâs happening.â
She continued, âFrom my experience competing against Lia Thomas at the national championships, I watched firsthand Women lose out on opportunities.â
âI watched Women not become All-Americans, missing ⌠that eighth and 16th place by one place because they were displaced by a male.
âThis, of course, goes against everything that Title IX was created to protect â and now we have the Biden administration, the people in the White House who are actively working to rewrite Title IX.â
In March 2022, Thomas became the first man to win a NCAA Division I womenâs swimming title, taking the 500-yard freestyle by over two seconds ahead of the runner-up. In the preliminaries, according to Swim World, he beat the second-place competitor by over three seconds â the same amount of time that separated finishers Nos. 2-11.
Thomas is unarguably the foremost object lesson in why Transgender men shouldnât compete in Womenâs Sports â and yet heâs hailed for his bravery. ESPN even celebrated him with a profile during Womenâs History Month.
Meanwhile, this is the treatment Gaines received at San Francisco State University this month for simply daring to speak the truth about the biological advantage men have in Womenâs Sports, no matter what treatments theyâve undergone:
WARNING: The following videos and tweets contain vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.
Meanwhile, people like California Democrat Rep. Katie Porter have come out against Gaines, claiming sheâs only doing this âfor likes and clicksâ â something the swimmer finds ironic.
âYou just canât help but laugh,â Gaines told Morgan.
âItâs always Women fighting against Womenâs sex-protected spaces and rights. It blows my mind. ⌠Iâm speaking for every female athlete, not just myself,â she continued.
âIâm done competing. This isnât about me. But I know whatâs at stake if someone doesnât use their voice.â
Alas, this is what happens when the truth becomes so inconvenient that lies become laws.
The Biden administration isnât going to back down in the face of evidence or opposition.
However, a lie doesnât become truth just because it becomes a law.
Too often, conservatives forget this and abandon culture war issues they believe are lost. This is why, now more than ever, we need the Riley Gaineses of the sporting world to step up for what they know is right.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
