I heard All-American swimmer Riley Gaines talk last week at River Hills in Jackson. She was so impressive: smart, charismatic and beautiful. Her story blew me away.
In a nutshell: After training and sacrificing for years to win an NCAA championship, she found herself swimming against a man who decided to call himself a woman. They tied. He got the trophy and all the attention for his transgender bravery.
Her most poignant words were describing being naked in the small locker room, squeezing into a tiny swimsuit, in full view of a man with a full set of exposed male genitalia.
This was traumatic to Riley and the other female swimmers. Exposing yourself this way in front of other women takes years of getting used to. Having to do it suddenly in front of a man, naked in close quarters, was traumatizing.
But those feelings apparently carried no weight compared to the desire by the NCAA officials to comply with transgender wokism.
Her fellow female swimmers were outraged by all of this, but terrified to be cancelled in social media for anti-woke behavior.
Not Riley. As soon as she learned that this new star swimmer emerged on the scene, from a Pennsylvania school not known for its swimming program, she was suspicious. It takes years of monk-like sacrifice and dedication to reach her level of national stardom. That doesn’t happen overnight.
The mystery was solved when she realized that the female swimmer, Lia Thomas, was in fact previously known as male swimmer Will Thomas, until he decided to switch to female competition in 2021. In doing so he went from 500th or so in the male rankings to one of the top female collegiate swimmers in America.
John Lohn, editor of Swimming World magazine, wrote, “Thomas’ title-winning effort in the 500-yard freestyle should be met with nothing less than a head shake, an eye roll or a shrug of the shoulders. Why? Because Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.”
To be eligible to compete as a woman, Thomas had to take testosterone-suppressing drugs for a year, but that didn’t change the fact that he still had far bigger lungs, arms, legs, heart, neck and muscles than Riley Gaines. He towers over Riley.
Not surprisingly, Thomas has been smashing women’s swimming records by absurd margins.
Gaines spent months trying to get the NCAA officials to change their minds. She gathered thousands of petition signatures. Tried to directly contact NCAA officials. Held mini protests at NCAA conferences. Spoke out through the media. But it was all for naught.
I had heard vaguely about Riley Gaines’ story but didn’t pay it much attention. To hear it in person, upfront and close, was quite an experience. It’s just nuts to let men compete against women in athletics. Their advantages are overwhelming. To do so would be the end of female athletic competition. This is the nuttiest thing I have heard about in a long time.
By the way, the Mississippi state legislature just passed legislation, now signed by Gov. Tate Reeves, banning such a situation from occurring in Mississippi. Similar laws have passed in 18 states. Some are being challenged by the ACLU in federal courts as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Our society has made great progress in tolerating those who struggle with their sexual identity. There are still nations in which homosexuality is punished by death. But such progress is undermined and threatened by ideologues who push reasonable progress to absurd extremes. This is one such case.
Riley has strong connections to Mississippi, calling it her second home. Her sister went to Ole Miss. Her father Brad Gaines, playing football for Vandy, collided on the field with Ole Miss football player Chucky Mullins 30 years ago, leaving Mullins paralyzed.
Three times a year, Gaines travels from Nashville to Russellville, Alabama, to visit Mullins’ grave, always on Christmas and May 6, the day Mullins passed away, two years after the fateful collision. When Ole Miss honored Mullins at halftime several years ago, Brad Gaines was part of the ceremony.
The conflict between Jackson mayor Chokwe Lumumba and state leaders has found yet another manifestation. This time in Lumumba’s refusal to sign a MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) between the Capitol Police and the Jackson Police Department. Lumumba calls the MOU an “assault on black leadership” and says it has constitutional issues.
Maybe so. But the fact still remains that Jackson has a horrible crime problem and the more resources devoted to fixing this the better.
Imagine trying to fight a raging fire and then telling fire trucks from a neighboring county to go away because they threaten your authority.
It’s bad policy, and dangerous, that the JPD and the Capitol Police have no formal process for working together.
This is a problem with our existing mayor. It’s all about him and his power base. It’s never about working with all interested parties to solve the problem. Finally, we have sentiment among state officials to get involved and help turn Jackson around. The state is offering to make a significant financial contribution that is like manna from heaven given the city’s eroded tax base. But instead of gratitude from the mayor, we get politics.
This street goes two ways. In turn, state legislators, if they truly want to help, must not be tone deaf to Jackson’s political sensitivities, grounded in historical realities.
Let’s hope this is where the common spiritual base of both the city and the state can soften words and change hearts. As I have written so many times in this column, Mississippi only has one capital, only one major city and it is right in the middle of the state. Mississippi as a state will never advance if our state capital is left in shambles.
One final note: One thing I like about Republicans is their support of free commercial markets, which goes hand in hand with freedom itself. Unfortunately, such noble concepts are often mired in less-noble political realities. Passing laws controlling the way people buy cars and wine are good examples.
So when the state legislature passes a law, as they just did, forcing Mississippians to buy an electric vehicle, or any vehicle for that matter, through a certain process (a dealer), it shows that Republicans have a long way to go to live up to their claim of being advocates for economic freedom.
