It is a good thing Lori Trahan was never forced to compete against Lia Thomas.
Otherwise, the U.S. Congresswoman from Lowell’s 3rd Congressional District might not have won that athletic scholarship to Georgetown University.
Trahan was one of nine Massachusetts members of the House, all Democrats, who voted against Republican-sponsored legislation that would prevent biological men from competing in women’s sports.
While no Democrats voted for it, the bill was passed last week on a 219 to 203 vote. President Joe Biden has promised to veto the bill in the unlikely event it is approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
One wonders, though, if Trahan, would have gotten her free college ride had she competed for it against a biological man identifying as a woman, like Thomas.
Perhaps she would have gotten her scholarship anyway. At a stately six feet tall, Trahan was a talented volleyball player at Lowell High School before attending Georgetown.
But back then, and at Georgetown, Trahan competed against biological girls and women, and not biological men identifying as women, complete with male anatomy, like Lia Thomas.
Besides, Lia Thomas’ sport is swimming, not volleyball. And at six feet, four inches tall Thomas looks as though she could be a linebacker for the New England Patriots.
But Thomas is a swimmer who was ranked 426th in college men’s swimming, only to become number one after competing in the women’s category.
Last month Thomas trounced the competition by winning the NCAA Division One Championship on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania team at the women’s freestyle swimming event.
To say Thomas, 22, dwarfed her female competitors would be an understatement. Standing close by, they looked small enough to be her children.
Nevertheless, the woke leftist media gushed over Thomas’ “victory,” while others saw it for what it was — a farcical disenfranchisement of actual female athletes.
As a former high school and college volleyball star, Trahan could at least have shown sympathy toward Payton McNabb of North Carolina. She is a high school volleyball player like Trahan once was, and who no doubt has college athletic scholarship dreams as Trahan once had.
McNabb, a senior volleyball player at Hiwassee Dam High School, suffered severe head and neck injuries as well as a long-term concussion after a biological male competing as a woman in the high school game spiked a ball in her face.
“My ability to compete was taken from me,” she said. “Having to play against biological males is not a level playing field and it is most definitely not safe.”
The North Carolina Legislature has pending legislation that would prohibit individuals from competing on sport’s teams that do not match the gender with which they were born. It is called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.
Ironically, McNabb made her remarks before a North Carolina legislative committee hearing at the same time the Democrats in the U.S House voted against the similar Republican-sponsored women’s bill before it.
“Allowing biological men to compete against biological females is dangerous. I may not be the first to come before you with an injury, but if doesn’t pass I won’t be the last,” McNabb said.
The teenager made more sense — common sense — than just about anything put forward by the Democrats.
In fact, the Democrats, like Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cannot — or will no — even define what a woman is.
I’ll tell them. A woman is an adult female human being, a girl prior to adulthood.
But the Democratic Party, once the champion of women, has been hijacked by the radical left to the point that it will not even accept the definition.
None of this is to single out Trahan.
But she is the only one to put out a public statement saying that she had her two young daughters with her as she cast her vote against banning biological men from competing against women in women’s sports.
“Today is a dark day for LGBTQ+ rights in our nation,” she said.
It’s probably a dark day for her daughters too.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
