Harris needs to say if she'll rewrite Title IX

                          Note: Title as Submited: "Candidate Harris, … Define “Woman.”



The Biden Administration’s new Regulations “re-writing” “Title IX” went into effect on August 1, 2024.

Title IX is the federal law that requires universities and colleges that receive federal funding to provide equal opportunities to female students. These include equal opportunities in sports. As such, an educational institution must provide male and female athletes with equal access to financial aid. This means that funds allocated to athletic scholarships must be proportionate to the participation of male and female athletes. In other words, if a university allocates $500,000 to athletic scholarships, and 45 percent of its athletes are female, it must allocate $225,000 of that amount to female athletes. (Outside the financial aid context, an institution does not need to spend the same amount of funds on male and female athletes).

In the words of Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA),

“The Biden-Harris administration might not be able to define what a woman is, but they are waging a systematic and deliberate campaign to eliminate Title IX and destroy women’s sports.

“50 years ago, Title IX created opportunity and allowed girls across America to dream. And we’re all watching the Olympics right now, and I can’t help but think that we are all witnessing those dreams become reality for so many of our young female athletes. … But just think about it: If Biden and Harris had their way, Katie Ledecky might have never earned a single medal for our nation had she been forced to compete against biological males.”

President Trump vows that he will immediately undo the Biden re-write of Title IX.

But what is candidate Harris position on the issue?

Is she for or against the re-write? The American people are entitled to know the Harris’ position. Or is she going to pull a “Biden,” and hide in the basement? Why isn’t the Mainstream Media insisting that she tell the voters exactly where she stands on the issue?


If ever there was a ‘woman’s right issue,” this is it. Biden’s re-write of Title IX will affect over 35 million girls and women students. By comparison, there are less than 1M abortions per year in the U.S.

Are men going to be allowed participate in — and dominate — women’s college and high school sports?

Will your daughter be required to share the locker room with male athletes? The shower? Rest rooms?

Will your daughter be forced to share a dorm room with a male when she goes to college?”

Can you your daughter be compelled to believe that a man who declares himself to be a woman is ipso facto a woman? Can she be punished for using the wrong pronoun in referring to the erstwhile male?

Conservatives believe that our U.S. Constitution should be construed consistently with the intent of the founding fathers. Progressives believe it should be construed in accordance with their own “more enlightened notions” of due process and equal protections.

Until the Obama years, there were only two sexes. It was a “settled question.” Since, Progressives, with their more “enlightened notions,” now insist that there are many more.

For many Americans, there are only two sexes: men and women. A man has a penis and testicles and cannot birth or bear offspring. A woman has a vagina and female organs, can conceive, carry and bear a child, and can nourish it with breast milk. A man has XY chromosomes; a woman, XX.

For the “more enlightened” Progressives there are additional sexes. Moreover, a person can change his sex. A man can undergo surgery, or he simply can declare himself to be a woman.

But are Progressives truly “more enlightened” or are they “science deniers?”

As a very little boy I can never recall not knowing the difference between a man and a woman. My mother was a woman. My father was a man.

When I was no more than two or three my mother explained to me “where babies came from.” When I noticed an aunt with a very large belly, my mother explained to me that my aunt was “pregnant and was going to have a baby.” She explained that the baby developed inside his mother’s womb. She told me that only women could have babies, and she told me some women fed their newborn babies with milk they produced in their breasts; others used baby bottles.

Eighty years of my life have confirmed to me the truth of what my mother told me. And eighty years of my life have confirmed to me the truth of Genesis 1:27.

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) sums the issues up well:

“The big concern that I have is that the rule applies to bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower areas, which means that schools and colleges could lose federal funding if they require students to use the facilities corresponding to their biological sex.

“And then it also expands the definition of sexual harassment to include addressing someone with the pronouns that align with his or her sex, that conflicts with his or her preferred gender.

“This is bending the norms of life that have existed for millennia.”

Since the days of Jefferson, Americans have always enjoyed freedom of belief, conscience and speech. If any American man wishes to believe that he is a woman, he has a right to do so.

Our 1st Amendment guarantees that right, as well as his right to declare himself a woman. That same 1st Amendment, however, guarantees that you and I can believe otherwise (believe our own eyes), and say that he isn’t.

Title IX took — as a given — that there were just two sexes. It requires schools that receive federal funding to provide equal opportunities to female students. It was not passed allow either men or women to “redefine themselves.” Such a re-write can only be done by Congress. 

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on September 1, 2024. 
Copyright 2024, John Donald O'Shea