Kicked for her stand

Attorneys who practice employment law are familiar with the term “bona fide occupational qualification”—“BFOQ” for short. It’s a narrow exception to federal and state laws prohibiting employers from discriminating on the basis of sex or other protected categories. The exception lets employers exclusively hire women to fill specific roles if doing so is central to the employers’ business models.

Elizabeth Eddy believes being a woman should be bona fide occupational qualification for players seeking to compete in the National Women’s Professional Soccer League. The defender for Los Angeles-based Angel City FC even dared to say so in a recent New York Post column.

Crazy idea, I know—especially with the word “women’s” right there in the NWSL’s name. But at least two of Eddy’s Angel City teammates aren’t exactly applauding her for standing up for fellow female athletes. In fact, fellow defender Sarah Gorden and goalkeeper Angelina Anderson, the club’s co-captains, have very publicly denounced her.

Eddy’s article smartly discussed the scientific studies confirming that male athletes have biological advantages over women that men don’t entirely lose once they begin suppressing their testosterone levels to “transition,” so to speak—assuming that’s even required of them. The article also included two suggestions for preserving safety and fairness in women’s pro soccer: Limit eligibility to players born with ovaries, as England’s Football Association now does, or require genetic testing. Such testing can include blood draws or non-invasive testing. Eddy suggested that such tests only be conducted once in a player’s career and called on her league to maintain strict confidentiality to protect players from embarrassment and harassment.

Gorden trashed Eddy at a press conference called after the article’s publication, accusing her Christian teammate of being “transphobic” and “racist” and harming teammates with her opinion. Gorden, who is of mixed race, leveled the accusation even though Eddy’s op-ed piece never alluded to the subject of race and even seemed to suggest there might be a pathway to allow intersex athletes and players who self-identify as “transgender” to compete in the NWSL.

“Inclusion and competitive integrity can coexist,” Eddy wrote. She also called “fairness and inclusion … core American values.”

The “racist” part of Gorden’s accusation stems from the Post’s inclusion of a picture of Orlando Pride FC forward Barbra Banda with Eddy’s article. Africa’s soccer confederation excluded the dark-skinned Banda from competing for her native Zambia in the 2022 African Nations Cup tournament for failing a gender verification test.

Eddy never mentioned Banda by name in her article, nor did she appear to target any other NWSL player. Regardless, revelations about Banda’s failed gender test prompted Pride FC, the NWSL’s players’ union, and the NWSL itself to issue statements supporting Banda, whom they claim has become a target of harassment due to Eddy’s controversial opinion piece.

Anderson, meanwhile, took up the banner for so-called “trans” athletes competing in her league by declaring, “Angel City is a place for everyone. It always will be.”

I wonder if Anderson would still say that if a man who calls himself “female” displaced her as Angel City’s starting goalie—or if such a man, playing for another team, blasted a hard shot off her face and caused disfigurement, temporary or otherwise. (Not that I would wish for either scenario.) But I digress.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that NWSL athletes are advocating in favor of trans inclusion in their league. Megan Rapinoe, the influential, openly gay former star who once roamed the pitch for the NWSL’s Seattle Reign FC when she wasn’t leading the U.S. national team to Women’s World Cups, has condemned President Trump for signing an executive order aimed at protecting women’s sports, calling his order “cruel” and “depraved.”

Still, it blows my mind that stances like Eddy’s engender such vitriol, even from fellow women—the same ones for whom Eddy is advocating. Riley Gaines knows this better than most. The former All-American swimmer for the University of Kentucky regularly visits college campuses, Charlie Kirk-style, to advocate for keeping men out of women’s sports. She’s twice had to barricade herself from angry mobs of student protesters—the most recent incident coming earlier this year in Portland, Ore.—and even recently feuded with New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over what should be a very common-sense issue.

As Post sports columnist Kirsten Fleming wrote in Eddy’s defense, such “radical devotion to tolerance” is decidedly intolerant: “That’s not an embrace of diversity—it’s the expulsion of a perceived heretic.”

Actually, to be more accurate, it’s those “stuck in the Stone Age of woke,” as Fleming calls them, who have embraced heresy. Now is the time for telling the truth. I pray more truth-tellers come forward.