Dear Leaders of Christian Institutions and Schools....

I’m writing to you as a product of Christian schools, a former athlete, a mother, and a sister-in-Christ.

October 30, 2023 will mark the 8 year anniversary of the YMCA’s decision to fire me for my public opposition to their choice to allow men in the girls’ locker rooms.

Before they pulled the plug on my employment, I reached out to both the Y’s local and national Christian mission directors for support in fighting this new policy. Both directors told me they would pray for me but that this was not ultimately their responsibility. Much of the messaging I received from YMCA leaders during this time was that “Jesus loves everyone, and we needed to be inclusive to all.”

The man who fired me was a longtime integral part of the local YoungLife leadership as well as a board member of a number of Christian stewardship foundations. I later discovered that he donated $10k of his own money to support the regional transgender alliance. His message, loud and clear, was that “Jesus loves transgender people, so we need to support them.”

Within a year of my firing, five unelected bureaucrats in WA State found a way to enact a statewide legal code requiring all businesses in WA to grant access to bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of gender identity, effectively eliminating every sex-segregated space in the state.

So we filed a legislative initiative to repeal the ruling and invited churches all across the state to help. One of our volunteers personally called over 400 churches to ask for their assistance. Of the 400 she called, only 7 said yes. Most gave a response similar to the one I received at the Y: “We don’t want to be perceived as unloving to the lost.”

Back then, the global conversation about “transgenderism” and “gender identity” was largely limited to the context of bathrooms and locker rooms. “We’re such a minuscule percentage of the population,” transactivists cried. “We just want to pee in peace.”

They played heavily upon the heartstrings of good, empathetic people who could not possibly foresee the Pandora’s Box they were about to open.

In retrospect, it’s crystal clear that safe bathroom access was not all they really wanted, and 8 years later, not only have they committed irreversible medical atrocities against hundreds of children, they’ve also run roughshod over every space the female sex has ever held. Male rapists are sexually violating female inmates in women’s prisons. Battered women seeking safety from violent men are being raped in the very shelters to which they had run for help. Men with deviant sexual fetishes are exposing their genitals to females in women’s locker rooms, and if the females complain, they are labeled bigots and asked to leave.

And in every state and every sport in existence, male athletes are transjacking the precious few athletic opportunities that exist for women and girls. When this first started, I made a graphic illustrating the various men who were stealing women’s scholarships and championship titles. There were six men included on the graphic. By the time I updated it the following year, it had more than tripled in size. The following year, there were 42. If I were to try to recreate this visual today in 2023, I couldn’t fit all the examples on the template. There are hundreds of men in virtually every sport and every level imaginable, sweeping up scholarships, thousands of dollars in prize money, and first place championships that rightly belong to women.

Women and girls are left with an impossible choice: compete against men, or don’t compete at all. Brave athletes like Martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies and Riley Gaines have begun to speak out about how aggressively unfair this is. Women like me would not be able to afford our college educations without the athletic scholarships that are now increasingly available to men who appropriate our sex. But it’s an uphill climb that’s going to require the legwork of more than just a few brave individuals. And that’s where you come into play.

We have long since passed the place where, “Don’t make a scene. Just be loving to the lost” is anything close to resembling an acceptable response to this madness. As you make policy decisions that relate to this subject, please consider the following points:

1. Hear me when I tell you that there is NOTHING loving about indulging the fetishistic delusions of men who bulldoze women and girls in their pursuit of identity. NOTHING. It’s about as loving as agreeing with an anorexic’s deeply held belief that she is morbidly obese, when, in fact, she weighs 85 pounds. That is to say, it’s actively UNLOVING. Letting this behavior go unconfronted is hurting people, not helping them.
   

2. Males struggling with identity issues are not the only ones who need love communicated to them in this context. Where is the love for the females stuck in this lose-lose situation? What message are you communicating to them about the value of their dignity and rights? The church has historically not been all that great about communicating its value of women. This is our time to rise and shine and do better. I work alongside hundreds of left leaning feminists who routinely do an infinitely better job of standing for girls than many of the churches I’ve tried to engage on this issue. We HAVE to do better.
   

3. When it comes to crafting policy or advising schools in your network as they engage this stuff, DO NOT EQUIVOCATE. Enact policies that say, in no uncertain terms, “Our female athletes will not be asked to compete against males. We will forfeit any and every game that puts them in this ridiculous bind, and we will suffer the consequences as they come. We will fight for them. We will go to bat for them. We will pursue redress of these wrongs through every avenue available. We will not back down from this fight.”
   

4. Many states have already passed legislation that requires public schools to comply with gender identity-based policies at risk of losing their accreditation and funding. In these regions, religious institutions are the only entities with the legal protections to resist. The YMCA Mission team told me this was not their responsibility. I am telling you, in no uncertain terms, this is absolutely your job. Who else is going to do it?

It’s not primarily a political issue; it’s a spiritual one, and as such, I don’t think Christians can afford to sit on the sidelines in the name of compassion. Good shepherds not only lead their flocks, they protect them, too. If women and girls can’t go to the church for help, where in God’s green earth are they supposed to go?