To kick off Pride Month, the Ohio Republican Party, who allegedly support “small government,” passed a statewide policy that explicitly bullies about five transgender high school students from participating on the sports teams that align with their gender identity. While I’m personally in favor of transgender athletes having the choice to be on sports teams that accord with their gender identity, such matters should at the very least be handled on a local level. Surely with the obscene level of poverty, income inequality, health disparities, and violence throughout Ohio and Wood County, our representatives Gavarone and Ghanbari have better things to do with their time than bully five transgender kids.
This policy, which also unfathomably includes genital checks for transgender athletes, is sick and shameful. Let’s be clear, the Republican Party is not the party of small government, it’s the party of big government exclusively for the wealthy, Far Right Christian Nationalists, and anti-gun control zealots. They bully marginalized groups to distract people away from supporting policies that would expand equality and decency in our country, ones that are widely available to the citizens of many democracies around the world. They do this because they want to keep all the money and power for themselves and their overlords. To be fair, many Democrats have done this to a lesser degree in recent decades, albeit without the bigotry, but at least they are starting to change. Transgender kids are the Republicans latest target in their unending culture war, but they won’t be their last. This type of cruelty can’t go on forever. We have to vote out people who do this kind of stuff.
Jordan Wilfong
Bowling Green
