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Former mayor and congressman Lou Barletta, leading Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, today pledged that he will protect girls’ and women’s sports in the Commonwealth from the politically correct inclusion of biological males in competition. Barletta said that as governor he would call for and sign legislation that requires eligibility standards for high school and college sports to include the biological sex of athletes as recorded on their birth certificates.
“Women fought for a level playing field in sports for a long time, and now the ‘woke’ crowd is taking it away from them again by forcing girls and women to compete against biological males who have physical advantages,” Barletta said. “We should celebrate the differences between men and women, and we should not limit the hard-won opportunities for female athletes by ignoring the obvious unfairness of putting biological males onto girls’ and women’s sports teams.”
Barletta highlighted legislation from State Rep. Barbara Gleim (199th District), titled the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” as the kind of bill he would sign as governor. Gleim’s legislation defends “opportunities for female athletes to demonstrate their skill, strength, and athletic abilities while also providing them with opportunities to obtain recognition and accolades, college scholarships, and the numerous other long-term benefits that flow from success in athletic endeavors.”
There are recent examples of biological males competing in women’s sports that demonstrate that this is an ongoing threat to female athletes. The University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swimming team has made international headlines because of a transgender swimmer who is shattering records, and who won one race by a preposterous 38 seconds. In the 2019-2020 school year, a University of Montana track & field athlete, who had transitioned from male to female, won the mile race at the conference championships by a significant margin.
Along these same lines, it is notable that based on 2018 statistics, there were nearly 300 high school male athletes who could beat the career best 400-meter time of American track star Allyson Felix, a woman who has won more gold medals than the legendary Usain Bolt.
“This is an issue of fair competition, but it also raises safety concerns for female athletes, as well as highlighting the idea of biological males competing for roster spots and scholarships on girls’ and women’s teams,” Barletta said. “How would you explain this to the girl who missed out on the last spot on a sports team in high school, or the young woman who couldn’t get an athletic scholarship for this reason? When I’m governor, I will prevent that from happening.”
Barletta noted that this issue goes hand-in-hand with other attempt by leftists to inject their “woke” views into schools. In the East Stroudsburg School District, books with extremely graphic sexual content were found in libraries in high schools, but were being made available to children as young as 6th grade.
Barletta also has stated that he would stop leftist indoctrination campaigns in K-12 schools, including the teaching of racist ideologies like Critical Race Theory, which teaches children to hate each other based on skin color. Barletta was the first candidate for statewide or federal office in Pennsylvania to sign the “1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools,” which is a promise to return to honest, accurate, patriotic education.
As a member of Congress, Barletta served on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. In December 2021, he announced his campaign’s Education Advisory Board, which will assist in the crafting of his education legislative priorities as governor.
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