Mark Takano: “This amendment perpetuates false arguments that allowing transgender girls to participate on school sports teams will…”

“This amendment perpetuates false arguments that allowing transgender girls to participate on school sports teams will undermine the well-being of cisgender girls. Again, my friends across the aisle are conflating and confusing the issue here. They want to talk about the struggles and the challenges we have with determining fair competition in elite sports, but what we are talking about here is a bill, the underlying bill, which would completely ban participation of all transgender kids across our country. As I said, the example in Utah, 75,000 high school students competing in high school sports, four transgender kids, one competing as a female. This seems wholly, wholly, disproportionate to the so-called problem. What is disproportionate is this proposal to completely ban transgender students from sports. Now, I want to say something here. The other side does not even want to acknowledge that transgender kids exist; that transgender people exist. Nevertheless, the legislation and this amendment target transgender kids, and they do it in a very, very insidious way. They will say, oh, transgender doesn't appear in this bill. But let's not kid ourselves that the very intent is to harm and stigmatize, isolate, make them pariahs, and this is simply wrong. Look, I am not a scientist. I was an English teacher most of my time before I got into Congress.…”