Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 19, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
President Joe Biden’s Department of Education issued new regulations on Friday, April 19, that prohibit discrimination based on a person’s “gender identity.”
The new rules, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, redefine the prohibition on sex discrimination for schools and education programs that receive federal funding — including K-12 schools and colleges and universities. Under the new interpretation of the Title IX protections, those rules now apply to any form of discrimination that is based on a person’s self-purported “gender identity.”
According to the executive summary of the Title IX revision, the changes are meant to “clarify that sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
The summary further states that, except in certain situations, education institutions receiving federal funding cannot carry out “different treatment or separation on the basis of sex,” which includes a prohibition on any policy or practice that “prevents a person from participating in an education program or activity consistent with their gender identity.”
The new Title IX rules, however, do not have any direct rules related to transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. About two dozen states have restricted participation in high school and college women’s sports to only biological women. It’s unclear whether these rules would violate the new interpretation of violations based on sex discrimination.
It’s also unclear how these rules would affect state laws that restrict bathroom and locker room access to a person based on his or her biological sex rather than gender identity or whether it would jeopardize free speech in relation to the use of a person’s preferred gender pronouns when those pronouns do not align with the person’s biological sex. The new rules did not clearly explain how the new definition would apply to such situations.
Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau expressed concerns that the Biden administration’s new definition of sex discrimination would negatively impact the rights of girls and women in education institutions.
“The Biden administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, threatens student safety and privacy, and undermines fairness in women’s sports,” Rouleau said in a statement on Friday.
“It is a slap in the face to women and girls who have fought long and hard for equal opportunities,” she added. “The administration continues to ignore biological reality, science, and common sense, and women are suffering as a result. The administration’s new regulation will have devastating consequences on the future of women’s sports, student privacy, and parental rights.”
Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former senior counsel at the United States Department of Education, said in a statement that Title IX is being “manipulated” by “gender activists and woke politicos” through these actions.
“Under the new rule, girls and women will no longer have any sex-separated bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, or other educational programs,” Perry said. “Women’s sports are likely endangered too. Any education institution, including many private schools that receive even nominal federal funding, will be affected by this rule.”
Perry suggested that federal lawmakers should challenge the department’s actions “by clearly defining men and women” in legislation.
When Congress first added Title IX’s sex discrimination provisions into federal law in the 1970s, the goal was to give girls and women equal access to education. The law itself does not make reference to “gender identity.”
Other changes included in the administration’s rules related to Title IX include the prohibition on discriminating against a girl or a woman based on her being pregnant, her choosing to have an abortion, or her recovery from pregnancy. The revision also changes the process by which sexual assault allegations are handled.
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And so here we are.
Our devoutly Democratic Catholic president has effectively made it illegal to affirm the Catholic faith.
And half of Catholics will, no doubt, respond by continuing to vote for Democrats.
I mean, come on. With Catholics like this, who needs atheists.
Only half?
The irony is that one of the more noted atheists, Richard Dawkins, recently said he was a cultural Christian and wanted to live in a place dominated by Christianity (as opposed to Islam).
The other half Republican? Do the hypothetical votes cancel each other out and amount to nothing in the end? If we were all to stay out of politics and expend out time and energy on spreading the light in this dark world, perhaps it would be a better place. Won’t happen though! 😂
Your placement of the word “devoutly” before “Democratic” says it all!
I think that too many Democratic Catholics, especially older Catholics, are still voting for Pres. John F. Kennedy, who was a fairly good man and a fairly good President. But there are also too many Democratic Catholics who honestly and naively believe that the Democratic Party helps “the little men”–the poor, the working people, the minorities, the immigrants, and the women and children, while the Republicans are all rich fat cats who use “the little men” to enrich their own pockets. How sad, and I hope that local Catholic parishes will be unafraid to provide educational opportunities for people, especially younger people who might be more open to learning truth, to learn about political REALITY in our country at this time in history! People don’t read books much nowadays, so I hope that Trent Horn’s book will have a strong online presence so that it will actually get read.
The first time I became consciously aware of the words Democrat and Republican was during the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960. (I was seven at the time.) Born and raised in a blue-collar city in eastern Massachusetts, I assumed that the whole world was made up of Democrats. One evening I said to my father, “We’re Democrats, right?” — “That’s right,” he answered. — “Well, who are the Republicans?” I demanded to know. Without hesitation, he said, “Rich people.” I realized the irony only years later. Between Nixon and Kennedy, who grew up with wealth, limousines, summers abroad, fancy boarding schools? Who, in short, was one of the “rich people”? Hint: It wasn’t Nixon.
JFK was a pervert and a serial womanizer. The press covered for him. He was not a good man.
Things change Mrs.Sharon. Back in the day everyone where we live were Democrats. Rich or poor alike. Now many working class people vote GOP.It keeps evolving.
Who are the most dangerous people presently who can over turn this nonsense? They’re ARCHEOLOGISTS! Since by looking at skeletal remains can easily state who was a woman and who was a man!!! Biden is a pathetic wreck of a catholic whose continual showing of “St” beau’s rosary beads has become a rite, that we could all do without!
I’ve thought pretty much the same thing. Despite contemporary rhetoric to the contrary, gender is not assigned at birth; sex is recognized at birth, after having been indelibly established in the womb. If one is male (or female) in the womb, one will be male (or female) until the moment of death, and if archaeologists dig up that person’s bones in the future, they will still be recognized as having been those of a male (or female).
Also, how many “biological female” athletes are bucking to compete in men’s games? I wonder why not. 🤔
There are a few women who have been admitted to men’s football teams as place kickers or holders. And both women and men skate together on synchronized skating teams (12 skaters on the ice performing a program that includes many of the figure skating elements such as lifts, spins, and jumps, along with team elements such as wheels, intersections, lines, circles, blocks. And Kaitlin Clark recently broke the record for baskets (basketball) long held by Pete Marovich. As a woman, I think most women have too much common sense to try to compete with men in professional sports. And now that workplace sports teams (baseball, volleyball, broomball, etc.) appear to be part of the Baby Boomer generation, I don’t know that we’ll see women competing with men very often.
Archeologists are now being cautioned not to identify human remains as male or female despite skeletal and DNA evidence–because they don’t know how the dead “identified.”
Won’t this new executive order also outlaw same-sex schools at any level?
I predict that in three to five years “dudes” will be winning nearly all women’s events, and that should put an end to this nonsense. It is unfortunate that until that happens a lot of dedicated women athletes will be missing out.
It’s schizophrenic. The reader likely knew immediately what that refers to. That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction. But the fact is it’s, I believe, more of a moral disease than clinical that afflicts many, particularly clergy. However, clergy disguise their immoral disease, and are aware of the malice, Biden flaunts it.
What President Biden’s immoral conceptualization of Christianity really says is that he believes what is evil is good, and that good is evil. How so? Well, isn’t that the moral theology that teaches there are evil behaviors, although there are also circumstances in our concrete reality that diminish the evil? A mitigation that corresponds between degree of difficulty and conscience, although contrary to this form of ethics, is the availability of grace, the gift won for us by Christ on the battlefield of the cross.
However, Title IX gender identity discrimination is an entirely new species of moral degenerative disease. Different from mitigation and undue burden. No need for grace here because what the Biden Administration now affirms, is the justice protected freedom to profess whatever gender description for themselves people wish regardless of their biological identity. This is an entirely new freedom based morality that overrules any personal conviction or religious belief. Joe Biden had said previously that he disbelieves what the Catholic Church officially teaches on this and other vital issues. And of course most know the rapport between the Vatican, a number of hierarchy, and Biden, strongly suggests that this is what the Church holds to be true. Should there be wonder why so many are leaving, when the Easter Vigil Mass this year had 17 attendees at a local parish when just a short couple of years past it was in the hundreds?
Local parish where?
My parish baptized/confirmed more than 17 people at Easter Vigil. The overall statistics seem to indicate a significant increase in people entering the Church.
I rather suspect it depends mainly on whether the parish in question believes what the Church has traditionally taught, or at least is struggling in that direction and against the prevailing current. There’s no point in going to Church if the prevailing culture is correct, so the person must be somewhat counter-cultural to even bother showing up, and the parish must be counter-cultural to attract those people.
Where? Anywhere small town USA. Why does a parish in the same vicinity flourish? Is it the priest who lives a devout life, a single parishioner offering his prayers and suffering? Perhaps the parish with a Legion of Mary that visits medical centers, nursing homes, jails, the shutins, the sick has that spark of faith. That the sun shines here and not over the hill is beyond our control. Not so where grace flows down.
“That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction.”
Ah, it is so easy! “I am a Catholic and Jesus said we should love our neighbor and so, out of my love for him I call him “she” and grant him access to all females-only places”. Being challenged “but this is not a woman” such a Catholic will answer “mercy is above justice” and so it goes. Being challenged “But the women do not want a man in the female changing room, they are afraid” the answer is “how intolerant of them – they have nothing to be afraid of, they must work on themselves”. Etc.
It is all about the heresy of being “nice”. Such politicians are “nice” to biological men. Is it an authentic empathy with transsexuals? – Absolutely not, it is all about “nice” self-image. Why am I so sure? – Because a person cannot have selective empathy and compassion. If he feels empathy with biological males who want to get access to the female-only places he must also feel the same empathy with vulnerable women who do not want those males to be there. But he does not. And why is that? – Because:
1) he does not have empathy for anyone, he is deficient
2) because if he refuses to allow males into female toilets he is not “nice” to women, he is just normal – why if he allows, he is very nice.
Here we are, it is all about being nice. Such “Catholics” swapped “good” with “nice” and reinterpret the Scriptures and Tradition accordingly – according to themselves.
I also argue that men who make the laws which endanger women are not really men, psychologically. They are devoid of a normal instinct any normal man has, of protecting women and girls. So those men (and women) who create such laws basically announce “we are neither male nor female but something else” – and here if they are Catholics they may say “Yes! Isn’t the apostle Paul said it?”
Yes. Men have lost their sense of manhood in fear of retribution. Appeasing deviants is ideological favoritism. To be odd or queer once disdained as a cowardly betrayal of one’s manhood is now vaunted as heroic. Liberty, now freedom to revise life itself, now an idol of worship, jealously protected by federal law. Enemies of truth such as George Soros invests millions to corrupt the Justice system with the aim of collapsing our once traditional Common Law culture. Lucifer has done an incredible job of feminizing modern man. Man’s elective weakness is a rebellion against God.
Prof Eduardo J Echeverria notes that Pope Francis, in his autobiography, ‘Life: My Story Through History’ advocates for legal support of same-sex civil unions of homosexuals “who [Francis says] experience the gift of love”. Echeverria asks, “In what sense, if any, is homosexual love a gift?” .
So, is it the story of feminizing men in the West? In my homeland (Russia) we have it because of multiple wars. After the war 1942-45 we had a deficiency of men – of the fathers and those whom women can marry. Even worse, the widowed mothers would often treat their sons as “my precious”. A generation spoiled by single mothers, men rose who seriously expected women to serve them just like their mothers did. They honestly believed that their value is in the fact they are men (what kind of men did not matter).
It is a very broad generalization of course but misogyny created by mothers is definitely a trend. And such misogyny, sucked with mother’s milk is the worst.
By the way, I have observed among younger Roman Catholic priests in the West a disproportionate number of those who clearly show the symptoms of being “a mother’s golden boy”. Like many Russian men, they are brought up by mothers – not that they had physically absent fathers but emotionally absent, disconnected from their wives or suppressed by them.
You make good sense on the issue Anna. Fortunately with will and fortitude a mother’s darling can still make himself a man.
It looks like there are 2 reasonable options: 1. Successfully challenge the law in federal court, and break it until the case(s) is won. 2. Start setting up a parallel education system that does not use federal funding.
Going along to get along is not a reasonable option.
The democrats can make up fantasy rules on any perv thing they want but it will not wash. More and more the little girls themselves are saying no when asked to compete against a boy at a competition. There is no reason for these girls to risk injury or compete on an uneven playing field to satisfy some crazy notion of sexuality which is transparently false. Its clear the kids have more brains than the adults on this issue.
The Government was allowed to create a religion when it established “gender identity” as a protected characteristic that isn’t shared by all people. There can only be protections for immutable traits like race and biological gender/sex, which are shared by everyone, not the unverifiable, unnatural and imagined idea of sex and gender. This makes “Gender Identity” a government sponsored religion which is why it conflicts with Christianity.