Onan Coca | September 18, 2016
(Constitution.com) – Well, the NCAA has done it. They’ve joined the political cultural fray and are standing strongly on the side of the immoral Left. Earlier this week, the NCAA decided to punish the state of North Carolina for deciding to pass a law that would ensure public restrooms remain single gender. The ACC soon followed suit and joined the NCAA in yanking their highest profile sporting events from the state.
On Monday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced it will relocate seven national championships from North Carolina because of the state’s now-infamous religious freedom bill, known as House Bill 2, which passed back in March.
The decision, made by the NCAA board of governors, will affect both men’s and women’s championships for tennis, basketball, and soccer amongst other sports, and will deprive the state of the benefits of hosting these major events. In its statement, the board justified the move with its apparent concern for North Carolina’s LGBT citizens—who represent 3.3 percent of the state’s population—adding that the current laws conflict with the NCAA’s commitment to “fairness and inclusion.”
If you expect the people of North Carolina to back down without a fight, you have another thing coming. The cultural left is working hard to deliver whatever damage it can to the Tar Heel state, but thus far the efforts at blackmail have not changed anything. In fact, the liberals’ attempts to deride and marginalize conservatives have hardened some of the leaders in the fight. This battle is actually creating new leaders for the conservative movement in North Carolina, leaders like Lt. Governor Dan Forest, who responded to the NCAA’s disgusting attempt to ignore the will of the people of North Carolina.
Lt. Governor Dan Forest’s Epic Response:
“The NCAA’s action sends a message to every female athlete and female fan attending their events that their privacy and security in a bathroom, shower or locker room isn’t worth the price of a ticket to a ballgame. We have seen the NCAA’s attitude towards women before when they stood by and did nothing during the rapes at Baylor. For years, we’ve seen the NBA turn a blind eye towards women victims of domestic abuse at the hands of their star players. Why should we be surprised now at the NCAA continuing this pattern of discrimination and degradation of women? The line has now been drawn in the sand, first by Hollywood, now by the NBA and NCAA, either accept their ‘progressive sexual agenda’ or pay the price. North Carolina will not play that game. We value our women too much to put a price tag on their heads.”
The ACC joined the NCAA in deciding to boycott the state, leading the Reverend Franklin Graham to join Lt. Governor Forest in condemning the NCAA and ACC for their hypocritical and bigoted decision.
As a lifelong resident of North Carolina and current CEO and president of two organizations employing nearly 1,500 North Carolinians, I am saddened—even outraged—by the vote of the ACC Council of Presidents to move conference championships from our state in protest of legislation requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their birth gender.
The Reverend Graham then went on to list several different examples of the ACC’s open hypocrisy in dealing with the subject of gay and transgender issues.
For example, the football championship game your conference voted to move from Charlotte in December is called the “Dr. Pepper ACC Football Championship.” Dr. Pepper and its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes and Carlyle Group, proudly sell their products in countries where homosexuality is illegal. Will the ACC drop its title sponsor? And why isn’t the LGBT community demanding you sever ties with such a “bigoted” corporate sponsor?
Currently, LGBT relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries—including 10 where homosexuality is punishable by death. Dr. Pepper is often bottled under contract by Coca-Cola bottlers—yet Coca-Cola conducts business in virtually every nation on earth, including nearly every country where homosexuality is currently criminalized. Can your conference continue to tolerate that?
The ACC website proudly features Toyota as an “Official Corporate Champion,” yet Toyota maintains factories and distribution centers in several of these discriminatory countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Egypt. Where is the moral outrage of the presidents of Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, UNC, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest?
Graham pointed out the ACC’s own policies on dividing sports by gender, just as North Carolina divides their public bathrooms by gender.
Indeed, the ACC’s member schools compete in 25 sports divided by gender—12 men’s sports and 13 women’s. Though gender issues may be becoming more complicated in higher education and other parts of society, the athletic conference you serve as commissioner doesn’t seem to have any problem distinguishing between the two genders—male and female. Yet, when a state like the one I live in seeks to make the same distinction with regard to use of public bathrooms in an effort to protect its citizens from those who would use the men’s room today and the women’s room tomorrow, the academic elites who comprise your conference fake a moral outrage that is frankly shameful.
Then the Reverend proved that the NCAA’s current policy was actually the same as the policy that North Carolina was also supporting on the bathroom issue.
Ironically, the NCAA is more discriminatory towards transgender people than the public policy they apparently wish to see as law in America. For example, opponents to legislation like NC House Bill 2 support permitting people to use the bathroom which corresponds to the sex they identify with on a given day—meaning someone might feel like a man today and a woman tomorrow, switching bathrooms at will.
Yet even the NCAA doesn’t allow such casual gender identity for participation in collegiate athletics. The NCAA Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation states, “Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.” This is precisely what supporters of HB 2 have been requesting—that people use public restrooms in accordance with their assigned birth gender.
I think I represent the views of millions who would rather preserve gender-specific public bathrooms—a mainstay for generations—than to attend a football game in my state to determine the champion of a conference governed by politically-correct, morally hypocritical academics.
Commissioner, in your statement today you said, “the ACC Council of Presidents made it clear that the core values of this league are of the utmost importance, and the opposition to any form of discrimination is paramount. Today’s decision is one of principle.” Will this same paramount “opposition to any form of discrimination” have you now sever ties with Toyota or Dr. Pepper?
Finally, the Reverend Graham appealed to the ACC not to use a political issue to attack a huge swath of the American public, particularly those sports fans living in North Carolina.
I am a big sports fan. My only daughter married a college football star that went on to play in the NFL. But I would rather defend the biological definition of the two genders as created by the Creator of the universe than to attend—or even watch on TV—a football or basketball game to determine the ACC champion.
Commissioner Swofford, you maintain your conference’s decision is “one of principle” and that “core values…are of utmost importance.” Well, millions of us who oppose your decision do so as a matter of principle and core values—values of privacy, safety and protection of our sons and daughters in public restrooms, and the principle that God created just two genders and assigned them at birth.
Please don’t make political pawns of student-athletes who just want to play football or basketball in North Carolina, and don’t continue to offend millions of Americans who endorse thousands of years of gender-specific bathrooms while you continue to accept corporate sponsorship money from companies proudly conducting their business in countries that discriminate against homosexuals to the point of death.
Read the Reverend Graham’s entire letter to the ACC here.
Make no mistake, folks, the Liberal Fascists will continue working to make cultural conservatives outcasts in our own society. Our traditional values and our belief in free speech, religious freedom, and the rights of everyone to have a say in how our states and nation are run are anathema to the Left. They will do anything they can to stop us, and they will continue to use sports as a bludgeon against us (just notice what the NFL and NCAA are doing to conservatives now).
It’s up to us to stand against them and give back as well as we take. If the NCAA wants to boycott North Carolina over single gender bathrooms… then let us boycott the NCAA for their bigoted stance against those of us who hold to traditional moral values. They need our money more than we need their sports. Now let’s prove it.