Republicans All Bark, No Bite On Top Culture War Battle

The GOP House bill to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports is a step in the right direction, but it’s still a toothless move that’s destined to fail.

It seems we’ve come out the other side of wokeness. We’ve passed the cultural moment where Republicans like Gov. Kristi Noem can easily be bullied into vetoing widely popular transgender bills out of fear of mob reprisal. That’s a good sign for the culture. Republicans now feel safe enough to speak their mind — and more importantly, their voters’ minds — on the issue of our time.

However, the ham-handed attempt to issue a national ban on transgender athletes in women’s and girl’s sports at federally funded schools and educational institutions feels utterly impotent and hopelessly naive. Yet an emboldened GOP House did just that, voting 218-206 on Tuesday in favor of the bill. In an epic sign of the times, even two dozen Democrats voted yay. The bill is set to move onto the Senate next week, but let’s hope it fizzles there.

It’s tempting to think of this as sticking it to the libs, fighting fire with fire, and meeting their ban-happy governing model with bans of our own. It might feel good, but it’s not going to do anything to sway the gender pendulum anywhere further back to normal. All I can say to Republicans hoping to enforce this bill is: good luck.

This will inevitably fall to state and local officials to enforce. Will the National Guard be federalized and deployed, like JFK did to ensure desegregation in 1960s Alabama? Don’t make me laugh. Universities and governing bodies, all either captured by woke interests or true believers, will simply not comply. Along the way, they’ll paint themselves as desperate victims of a backward, totalitarian regime that wants nothing more than to see them “genocided.” Activist groups, legal advocates, and NGOs will all flood the zone, drawing money, attention, and new reserves of energy to the waning cause. As a result, legacy journalists will have everything they need to spin a new morality tale to the masses.

Far from a practical victory for the Right, this will inevitably turn into a propaganda victory for the Left. Currently, national sympathy stands with the women and girls unfairly beaten out, sometimes literally, by the men they’re forced to compete against. But with a few months of cherry-picked sob stories from hardworking transgender thrust into the national spotlight, expect national sympathy to swing back in the other direction. From there, it’s only a matter of time until votes follow.

Republicans still don’t understand the levers of state power. Democratic bans work because they’re enforced through carrots and sticks. Transgenderism became the institutional norm because through a litany of newly imposed bureaucratic, professional, and social norms and regulations, rejecting it became culturally poisonous. Criticism of the transgender movement was effectively banned without a single piece of legislation. Republicans should take note.

In reality, smart Republicans surely know all of this. This is a messaging bill, and messaging bills are always dumb in terms of practice. It’s designed to show right-think and that they’re “doing something” rather than actually doing anything. But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to do what needs to be done, either. (RELATED: Think TikTok’s Bad? Check Out The Latest Chinese App Driving American Kids Wild)

However, the solution to men in women’s sports will come only by making transgenderism as politically and culturally poisonous as criticizing the movement was a few years ago. Rather than an outright ban, this requires putting massive pressure on athletic governing bodies, perhaps even investigating their leadership or issuing indirect regulations that make it harder for them to operate under the status quo. Target the advocacy groups and NGOs lobbying for and funding the transgender craze; investigate their funding crack down on their donors, and delegitimize them in the public eye. Make an example of the state and local officials who stand in the way, but don’t make martyrs out of the “victims.”

This will go leagues further than any ham-handed ban ever could. As we’ve seen these last few years, a little lawfare goes a long way.