During a hearing this week of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was meant to cover efforts to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, panel member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took the opportunity to accuse Democrats of trying to effectively destroy women’s sports via efforts to be inclusive towards transgender individuals.
During his familiarly melodramatic commentary, Cruz questioned Kelley Robinson, who leads the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Robinson sought to explain the reality amid GOP attempts to capitalize on the experiences of a woman named Riley Gaines, who’s participated in organized swimming and has gotten a lot of mileage out of claiming unfair treatment when competing against a transgender woman named Lia Thomas. In short, there have actually been strict guidelines in place for transgender participation in competitions evidently including an infamous meet-up between Gaines and Thomas — and these guidelines originate in 2010, with an update implemented seemingly before the two’s competition making them even stricter!
Republicans have once again divorced themselves from facts in their angry attacks on their opponents. “What I can say here is that the NCAA has rules in place,” the witness explained to Cruz. “They’ve had rules in place for the last decade, and when this competition happened, the rules were clear.”
Cruz was berating Robinson with questions about whether she thought there were differences between men and women and what she thought the relevance of women’s sports leagues even was. “I think that there are definitions for biological sex, which is different than gender,” she eventually added, further elaborating to Cruz: “I’m saying that there’s a difference between sex and gender and that the NCAA has rules in place which they have for the last decade which determine that related to participation.” Robinson was remarkably persistent in finishing her answers, even as Cruz did his best to speak over her, seemingly more interested in creating sound bites for his fans than uncovering truth, which was very in character.
Cruz’s questioning is viewable below:
