WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) declared their support of a bill to protect female athletes from male competitors, calling it an issue of “fairness.”
The statement last night follows a failed vote earlier this week on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act in the U.S. Senate. A similar version has passed the U.S. House.
The Senate voted 51-45 to advance the bill, but it needed 60 votes to continue on for a final vote.
All the no votes came from Democrats, though pro-LGBT Senators Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Peter Welch of Vermont did not vote. Neither did Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, according to the roll call.
The legislation would have codified into law President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting men from competing in athletic programs designated for women, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.
Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, chair of the USCCB’s Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth committee, criticized the vote’s outcome on the “commonsense legislation” as did Bishop David O’Connell, Catholic education committee chairman from the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey.
They wrote:
The teaching of the Catholic Church calls us to advocate for the equal dignity of men and women, recognizing that God created us male and female. This legislation would ensure a level playing field for women and girls to compete in fairness and safety with other females. An ideological promotion of personal identity, detached from biological reality, undermines human dignity and the role sports play in true educational formation.
“We reiterate our long-standing support for this Act and encourage female student athletes nationwide to continue to strive to uphold fairness and equality in athletic competitions,” the bishops stated.
Both prelates had previously expressed support for President Donald Trump’s executive order that also aimed to stop male athletes from beating up girls in female sports.
“Consistent with the Catholic Church’s clear teaching on the equality of men and women, we reaffirm that, in education and in sports as elsewhere, policies must uphold human dignity,” the bishops wrote in February. “This includes equal treatment between women and men and affirmation of the goodness of a person’s body, which is genetically and biologically female or male.”
The issue of male athletes competing against girls has continued to be a source of contention for Democrats, along with other issues in the LGBT agenda.
Soon after the election, some Democrats came out and acknowledged that the party’s radicalism on LGBT issues contributed to the party’s loss.
For example, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton said members of his party “spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
However, even those Democrats are not always willing to put such statements into practice, as Moulton soon after voted against a bill to protect girls from male competitors, calling it “too extreme … because it fails to distinguish between children and adults and different levels of athletics, school-aged kids who simply want to play recreational sports and build camaraderie like everybody else could be targeted by the federal government.”
Similarly, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, considered to be a potential 2028 presidential candidate, appeared to come out against male athletes competing against females in an interview with Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk.
However, Newsom quickly pivoted to the baseless claim that gender-confused males would be more likely to commit suicide if they could not compete against girls in sports.