POLITICS: Reality must reign in Supreme Court’s trans sports fight

What’s the difference between boys and girls, particularly on the athletic field?

Quite a lot, of course.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard the case of two transgender students, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, biological boys fighting to compete on girls’ sports teams.

Pepper-Jackson is from West Virginia and Hecox is from Idaho, two of the 27 states that ban biological boys from competing in girls’ sports. 

Only a small number of people are personally affected by transgender athletes in sports — in fact, Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers say their client is the only person affected by the law in the entire state of West Virginia.

For now.

But if the Supreme Court strikes down these state laws, it stands to reason that more biological boys will want to reap the rewards that come from being at the top of a competitive sport.

They might not even need to undergo medical procedures, Tuesday’s argument indicated — just declare a handy new “identity.”  

A middling male basketball player could suddenly become the best player on the girls’ high school hoops team — and be recruited by colleges for his success.

It would destroy girls’ sports and effectively end Title IX, the civil-rights law enacted specifically to bring a level of fairness to girls’ sports from kindergarten through college.

The whole point was to give girls an equal chance to play.

Rights groups like Lambda Legal argue that keeping biological boys out of girls’ sports would be a terrible setback for gay rights in general.

“Politicians are deciding who belongs and who gets left out,” the group declares; “it’s yet another step toward more discrimination and harm.”

That’s disingenuous, and they should admit it.

The fight for gay rights, including marriage, was about equality — gaining the same rights that straight people already enjoyed.

Allowing biological boys in girls’ sports does the opposite, introducing inequality where it never was before.

And the whole point of the movement in favor of gay acceptance is that gender matters quite a lot.

No, this debate simply comes down to accepting reality.

Boys and girls — and women and men — are different, and have different strengths and weaknesses.

That doesn’t change just because a boy starts wearing skirts or going by a different name.

Thousands of years from now, an archaeologist excavating the body of a person born a boy in 2026 would conclude that individual had the DNA and bone structure of a biological male.

That, as they say, is following the science.

Pepper-Jackson’s attorneys argue their client started puberty blockers at an early age, so doesn’t have the benefit and advantages of having gone through male puberty.

Puberty certainly increases the height, weight and strength difference between the sexes — but any parent knows that difference is present long before a boy grows some whiskers on his top lip.

Years before puberty, boys’ bodies are built differently — in terms of lung capacity, fat distribution, muscle build and more  — and their minds and attitudes are not the same.

There’s a reason none of the trans-sports cases winding through the courts involve a biological girl who identifies as a boy desperately trying to join a boys’ sports team: Such a girl would be at a massive competitive disadvantage, and everyone knows it.

No boys would lose wins and opportunities if the roles were reversed.

The fight over allowing boys in girls’ sports reverberates throughout our society.

If we accept the lie that boys can become girls — and then let them challenge girls on the field as if there’s no difference between them — what other falsehoods will we accept?

To allow this to continue, we must all pretend not to know things we very clearly know.

“I’m not a biologist,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson responded in her Senate confirmation hearing, when asked if she could define the word “woman.”

But most Americans know exactly what a woman is, no biology degree necessary — and they know that a woman is not a man.

Our female athletes shouldn’t have to bear the burden of playing against boys.

And they shouldn’t have to individually stand up against this injustice and remove themselves from the sports they love, as we’ve been forcing them to do for years now.

They shouldn’t have to take the brunt of the rage and hate that comes with refusing to be pummeled for the sake of this deception.

States are writing laws to protect these girls so that they don’t stand alone.

The Supreme Court has an easy call here: Reality must reign.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.