Former athletes and activists spoke this week at a United Nations assembly urging the international body to encourage sanctions on men who try to compete in women's sports.
Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davies and former West Virginia athlete Lainey Armistead were among those who spoke at the Wednesday event in New York City, describing the obvious advantages men have over women in athletics.
'NO males at all in women's sport.'
"I'm here today because we've all seen what happens when males are allowed to compete on women's teams. ... It's demoralizing and unfair, and just plain wrong," Armistead said.
The soccer player explained that while West Virginia has laws that ensure only biological women can compete in women's sports, she still heard stories at her university about women getting hurt during competitions against men in female athletics.
"In just the last three years, the one male athlete who has been allowed to compete against girls in West Virginia has already displaced nearly 300 girls. And that's just one athlete."
Davies was much more blunt in her speech, speaking on the simple biological differences that should be seen as "common sense."
"Females are at a physical disadvantage," she said. "This doesn't mean that we're worse or better; it just means that we’re biologically different."
Davies is a former Olympic swimmer who won silver in Moscow in 1980, competing in three Olympics in total. She also won two gold, two silver, and two bronze at the Commonwealth Games between 1978-1990.
"I don't know a single person that wants to exclude anybody. However, we do want to see women have fair and safe sport. And we cannot wait until a woman is seriously injured or worse still, killed, to be able to deal with the science and the obvious and the common sense," she added.
Davies has consistently called for sex screening to return to the Olympics, stating explicitly that even in the 1970s it was a simple process.
"A sex screening test takes one minute once in your life only (because humans can't change biological sex) which is a simple swab to the inside of your cheek. I had one at the Montreal Olympics. Not at all intrusive especially when Olympic athletes have to consent to drug testing," she wrote on X in July.
"NO males at all in women's sport," she urged in September. "Inclusion is now exclusion of females from their own races by males!"
— (@)
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom — including Kristen Waggoner and Reem Alsalem, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls — joined the athletes.
Both called for the international sports community to ensure women can participate in athletics without being at risk of harm from men.
"Our plea to the world is to learn from the mistakes that have been made — and that are now being corrected — so that your daughters can walk into a future of fair and safe sports," Waggoner asked.
Alsalem, a longtime advocate in the space, said that the failure to protect the female category has been one of the most egregious forms of discrimination against women.
She added that the essence of being female has been "willfully pushed aside" despite the pain, distress, and humiliation women are facing at the hands of men who want to beat them in their own competitions.
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The satirical website the Babylon Bee has had enough. Claiming that California's recent laws on online speech have gone too far, those at the Bee have filed a motion against California’s Attorney General Robert Bonta, urging the courts to immediately halt enforcement of what they see as unconstitutional restrictions. Several new laws, including AB 2355, AB 2655, and AB 2839, have been accused of eroding the First Amendment protections of free speech.
In fact, AB 2839 was recently deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge. Judge John A. Mendez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California said the law "acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel" and "hinders humorous expression."
In an exclusive interview with Blaze News, Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom spoke about the ongoing battle on behalf of the Babylon Bee.
"California's laws are a roadmap for widespread censorship. They use vague standards to punish people for posting certain political memes online," Waggoner said. "If Americans can be sued for posting, or even reposting political jokes, then we do not live in a free society."
Perhaps the most egregious law is AB 2655, also known as the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024.
The bill's digest says the law prohibits any person or entity from distributing deceptive audio or visual media about a candidate for elected office within 60 days of the election. If the content intends to "injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate," it could be considered illegal.
The law also requires any "large online platform" to block deceptive content before and after an election.
'Individuals must be able to express political beliefs without fear.'
Under the California law, platforms are required to develop reporting procedures for California residents to flag any content that "has not been blocked or labeled in compliance with the act."
The laws "censor parody and satire," Waggoner continued. "When Governor Newsom signed the laws, he said publicly that [California] made it illegal to post a parody video about Kamala Harris. So even Governor Newsom thinks the laws ban satire," she claimed.
Waggoner went on to say that the same government officials can't seem to articulate to the public how far the laws will go. These acts would "kill humor," Waggoner said, adding that they could blur the lines between a democracy and a dictatorship.
Based on what were described as vague standards with steep penalties, the Babylon Bee is asking the government to stop the new laws before they get out of control.
"In a free society, individuals must be able to express political beliefs without fear of being dragged into court to defend a meme. And we shouldn't trust politicians like Gavin Newsom to be arbiters of political truth online," the attorney added.
Newsom's spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, said in a statement that the governor's office was "confident" courts would ultimately uphold the new law against "deepfakes."
"Deepfakes threaten the integrity of our elections, and these new laws protect our democracy while preserving free speech," the spokesperson said.
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A federal judge in the Lone Star State has ordered three attorneys for Southwest Airlines to attend a Christian law firm's eight-hour course on religious liberty for having violated court orders issuing from a pro-life flight attendant's religious discrimination case.
In addition to hammering the attorneys over their apparent insolence, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr, nominated by former President Donald Trump in 2019, has made sure Southwest cannot hide from its employees its past discriminatory behavior or its legal inability to repeat that behavior, requiring that they say as much in an internal memo.
TheBlaze previously reported that Southwest Airlines fired Charlene Carter in 2017 for expressing pro-life views and taking issue with the requirement that she subsidize pro-abortion activism by way of mandatory union dues. She had been with the airline for roughly 20 years.
With the help of free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Carter took the Transport Workers Union and Southwest to court.
In July 2022, a federal jury agreed that Carter had been wrongfully terminated for her pro-life and religious views and awarded the former flight attendant a $5.1 million verdict — $950,000 from Local 556 of the Transport Workers Union and $4.15 million from Southwest Airlines.
Starr reportedly had to reduce the original amount to $810,180, including $150,000 in back pay, because federal discrimination law limits damages that companies can pay out.
In December, Starr further ordered the company to reinstate Carter with full seniority and benefits.
Extra to compensation and reinstatement, Starr ordered the airline and union to take various corrective actions, such as informing "Southwest flight attendants that, under Title VII, they may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs, including – but not limited to – those expressed on social media and those concerning abortion."
It appears the airline did not follow Starr's order to the letter or even the sentence.
According to a sanction order issued by Starr on Monday, messages dispatched by Southwest airlines to employees "failed to mention Title VII, that the federal law known as Title VII contains a prohibition, and that that prohibition forbids Southwest from discriminating against flight attendants for their religious beliefs."
Instead, they said only, "Southwest does not discriminate against our Employees for their religious practices and beliefs.
"In the universe we live in — the one where words mean something — Southwest's notice didn't come close to complying with the Court's order," wrote Starr.
The federal judge indicated the attorneys for the airline further violated the court's corrective order by circulating a memo around the company "stating that its employees must abide by the types of policies over which Southwest fired Carter and that it believed its firing of Carter was justified because of these policies."
Consequently, Carter moved for sanctions, and the court moved to take Southwest to task once more.
The airline has been ordered to send attorneys Ferrie Forbes, Kevin Minchey, and Chris Maberry to religious liberty training, which will be conducted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, concluding that this "is the least restrictive means of achieving compliance with the Court's order."
Starr stated that "Southwest must transport ADF's representative to Dallas and be responsible for any food, accommodation, or other travel expenses for ADF's representative."
Starr has also ordered the airline to issue an email to its flight attendants explaining how its previous messages were wrong, along with the correct message.
Concerning the order, Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, said in a statement obtained by TheBlaze, "Southwest’s past behavior against Carter was discriminatory and illegal, and the District Court’s order rightly shuts down Southwest Airlines’ bald-faced attempt to dodge its responsibility to inform flight attendants of its wrongdoing."
"Hopefully this order provides hope to other independent minded workers that their right to express their religious dissent against union and company political agendas cannot so easily be waved away," added Mix.
The ADF said in a statement to CNN it is "pleased that the judge and jury protected the religious speech of the employee in this case."
Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel for ADF, said, "Every company should respect religious liberty and diverse viewpoints in the workplace. ... We are happy to help Southwest achieve that goal by providing training on Title VII and other applicable laws barring religious discrimination."
Southwest and the union appealed the December ruling and told CNN they will similarly appeal Starr's sanctions order.
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A woman has been arrested again in the U.K. after praying silently near an abortion facility in Birmingham, according to Alliance Defending Freedom UK.
Police recently asked Isabel Vaughan-Spruce to move so that she would be outside of an "exclusion zone." When Vaughan-Spruce pushed back, contending that she was not engaging in prohibited activity, the officer then proceeded to tell her, "[Y]ou've said you're engaging in prayer, which is the offense."
\u201c\ud83d\udea8BREAKING: Isabel has been arrested, AGAIN, for THINKING.\n\nMPs vote TOMORROW on banning silent prayer near all abortion facilities in\ud83c\udff4\udb40\udc67\udb40\udc62\udb40\udc65\udb40\udc6e\udb40\udc67\udb40\udc7f&\ud83c\udff4\udb40\udc67\udb40\udc62\udb40\udc77\udb40\udc6c\udb40\udc73\udb40\udc7f\n\n"You've said you're engaging in prayer, which is the offense."\n"Silent prayer."\n"You were still engaging in prayer, which is the offense."\u201d— ADF UK (@ADF UK) 1678129713
Last year, Vaughan-Spruce was arrested outside of the facility after telling an officer, who had asked if she was praying, that she "might" have been praying in her mind. The officer asked her if she would voluntarily go to the police station for questioning. Vaughan-Spruce said if she had a choice, she would not go along. At that point, she was arrested.
She was charged with "protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users," according to ADF UK, which said that the facility had been closed when she was there and that she was ultimately acquitted.
Woman Arrested for Silently Praying www.youtube.com
The arrests pertain to a Public Space Protection Order, which prohibits various activities in a "restricted area," including, "Protesting, namely engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means. This includes but is not limited to graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling," the order states.
Vaughan-Spruce noted during an interview on GB News that she "would naturally assume" that since she had been acquitted, she would be able to pray outside of the abortion facility. She said that she has been offering women help outside of abortion centers for two decades and that many women have taken and been thankful for the help.
\u201c'I was silently praying inside my head and six officers came and told me I was engaging in prayer - which was an offence.'\n\nIsabel Vaughan-Spruce tells Jacob Rees-Mogg about her experience of getting arrested after praying outside an abortion clinic.\u201d— GB News (@GB News) 1678222203
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David Weiss, the fired Colorado school administrator at the center of a criminal investigation kept secret by authorities, was found dead, and the county sheriff’s office finally clarified that he was under investigation for allegedly possessing child pornography materials. Weiss, the former chief of staff of Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), was reported dead by […]
If the law were unconstitutional, the judge wrote, '[a]ny person — including a minor — would be able to obtain anything from meth, to ecstasy, to abortion so long as a single medical professional were willing to recommend it.'
Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia joined the ranks of five other states where the measure has also been blocked.
'To date, our legislature has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorized, elective abortion.'
The FDA’s endorsement of abortion pills, Hawley said, ‘has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law.’
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