A Republican candidate for state Senate has launched a campaign to ban biological men who identify as transgender from competing against women in sports — and other Republican candidates are expected to jump on the bandwagon.
Gina Arena, a mother of six girls who is running in the 40th Congressional District in the lower Hudson Valley, says the proposed “equal rights” amendment on the November ballot would allow transgender athletes to compete against women.
She is currently putting up lawn signs throughout the district that read “Save Girls’ Sports,” a nod to her new campaign called “Save Girls’ and Women’s Sports.”
Arena faces a rematch against Democratic Senator Peter Harckham in the district that includes Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. Two years ago, she won 47% of the vote against Harckham in a close race.
“New York State has shamefully become the national leader in discrimination against women and girls in sports, and that is intolerable,” Arena said in a statement.
“Sixty-six percent of New Yorkers said in a recent poll they wanted girls’ sports left alone, but radical progressives like my opponent, Senator Pete Harkham, think they know better than the rest of us.”
Harckham voted in the Senate to put the proposed amendment, also known as Proposition 1, to a vote.
The proposal asks voters whether they support or oppose adding language to the Constitution that says people cannot be denied rights because of their “race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive health care, and autonomy.”
A “YES” vote will add these anti-discrimination protections to the New York State Constitution.
A “no” vote would remove these protective provisions from the constitution.
The language protecting abortion rights has attracted the most attention.
But a Republican strategist said many voters – and even candidates for public office – are unaware that the proposed constitutional amendment would enshrine protections for transgender people in competitive sports at the expense of women.
Other Republican candidates will pounce on the transgender sports ban, said former Republican congressman John Faso, an adviser to state Republican Chairman Ed Cox.
“Many Republican candidates will express their opposition to (the proposal). The amendment also undermines the rights of parents,” Faso said.
Nassau County recently passed a law that again bans transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports at county athletic facilities. But the state’s Attorney General, Letitia James, filed suit last month to block the ban, alleging it violates the state’s anti-discrimination law.
The Coalition to Protect Kids-NY, which opposes the amendment, will hold several press conferences on Monday, National Women’s Equality Day, in New York City Hall Park, in Binghamton, in East Elmhurst in Queens and in Rochester to protest “discrimination against girls in sports.”
“This is a bizarre and dishonest interpretation of New York State’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), but not surprising given Gina Arena’s roots with Moms for Liberty. The ERA is just that: it guarantees all New Yorkers equal protection under the law. There is nothing in the ERA that would mandate this. Gina’s scapegoating of a small number of transgender children is hateful and unacceptable,” the Harkham campaign said.
The pro-ERA group New Yorkers for Equal Rights stressed that the referendum did not explicitly stipulate transgender participation in women’s sports.
“New Yorkers will see through these blatant lies and we will win in November. No matter how many billboards the anti-abortion activists buy, New Yorkers know the truth: Prop 1 protects our fundamental rights and freedoms – including abortion,” the group said.
The pro-choice group had previously insisted that the change would not deprive parents of their rights.
