It’s hard to describe how misguided the Florida legislature is in passing a transgender sports ban.
It is hard to describe how hateful this soon to be law is in its attempt to discriminate against children, and it’s hard to describe how exhausting this fight is for those in the trenches.
Transgender children exist. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to be allowed to be children and do all the things that children enjoy. They deserve to play. Playing sports with friends can be critical for childhood development as it allows kids to experience being part of a team. Or it can just be fun.
Being part of a team builds confidence and connection and community. Teammates learn to put individual goals aside and direct their efforts towards a greater goal. (Yes, sports pun intended.) They learn to contribute equally and they learn to call out teammates that don’t pull their weight.
Children can also learn to focus their passion and play hard. The impact this education makes over a lifetime is immeasurable. To be clear, by passing any transgender sports ban all children will be denied the full experience of lessons learned through play and sport because one group of children will be missing. The Florida legislature has chosen to prevent growth and education. Their choice is misguided, harmful, and hateful.
While advocating in Tallahassee, I remember the legislators hyping their own sport successes in school as though it was a badge of honor. This former coach thinks they entirely missed the point of so many of the lessons of sports and team play.
We have been advocating against this bill for months, but just two days before the end of session, the Senate pulled a procedural move in the shadows and adopted an anti-transgender amendment to SB 1028, an education related bill, and it passed. This bill now rests on Governor DeSantis’ desk and we continue to advocate against it. Kill the bill! We know it’s an uphill battle. By the time you are reading this, we will know the final outcome.
We choose to fight uphill battles. We have no choice. We must continue to advocate against discrimination because surrender would mean tragedy and despair for many children. We must continue to fight even when it is overwhelming and exhausting. I do not use those words lightly. Like Atlas condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity, advocates are destined to hold back the waves of hatred and discrimination until those waves cease to pound the shoreline. We use education to combat a perpetual tide of fear in the hopes of creating understanding and space for all Americans to thrive. This time, we fight in the hopes of creating space for childhood. We fight to let every child play.
We fight, but the exhaustion grows and despair takes root because the fight has changed. Within the last few years, transgender Americans like Laverne Cox have appeared on the covers of glamorous magazines and transgender voices have finally found some space in American culture.
This should be a time of education, conversation and growth. We should be celebrating an important step closer to “liberty and justice for all.” Instead, the opposition has doubled their efforts to erase transgender Americans.
Recently, they have employed guerrilla-style warfare to ambush advocates with bills that attack children. They use fear to create problems that do not really exist and attack the most vulnerable among us. They use misinformation to plant seeds of hate. Their ultimate goal is erasure.
I’ve lost count of the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills that have been under consideration in state legislatures across the country. Of those, about half directly target transgender people and many aim to specifically prohibit transgender children from playing sports. A few similar bills were passed, but they were unexpectedly defeated by a governor’s veto. These wins are important because they provide life-sustaining hope. We need hope because there is no respite, not yet.
DeSantis’ decision about the bill will be known before this article is printed. Some say the outcome is a foregone conclusion; the bill is as-good-as-signed and this particular fight is over. But we refuse to yield so readily and we continue to advocate against it.
There is still some time on the clock, and thankfully there have been some recent wins. In Texas, a similar bill that would prevent transgender children from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity failed to advance out of a House committee. In Kansas, Governor Laura Kelly vetoed a similar bill when it reached her desk. And North Dakota’s Republican-led Senate sustained Governor Doug Burgum’s veto of a bill that also restricted transgender children from playing sports.
Finally, the Department of Justice has already issued statements reiterating that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex and guidance that this means transgender children can play on the sports team that aligns with their gender identity.
Nonetheless, I write this today with Schrodinger’s cat on my lap as SB1028 is both alive and dead. Both well-supported and illegal. Acknowledging this means acknowledging that this particular fight is far from over. In fact, it’s time to rally. It’s time to overcome the exhaustion, focus our passion and support our equally exhausted teammates.
Afterall, if we want to win, we must collectively recall the lessons of our youth: contribute equally, pull your weight and play hard.
Nathan Bruemmer is the president of St Pete Pride and former executive director of ALSO Youth in Sarasota.
