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During the 2023-24 season, roughly (some double-counting is likely) about 45,000 Maine high school athletes participated in sports. During an eight-year tracked period (2013-2021), the Maine Principal’s’ Association, a private nonprofit with full authority over such matters, received 56 requests from trans students “wishing to participate on a high school sports team consistent with their gender identity.” The BDN noted that just four of those requests were from trans girls.
This is the minuscule reality upon which state Rep. Laurel Libby sought to stoke fear and build political capital by not only intruding on the privacy of a student athlete and her family, but by also elevating this to the national level. There it was eagerly seized upon by what I consider malignant players — President Donald Trump at the forefront — to fan the culture wars while attempting to distract we citizens from the subversion of our Constitution and its carefully wrought separation of powers.
I was once a registered Republican who staked out Goldwater signs in central Aroostook County. But the 180-degree dark money-fueled shift in that once-Grand Old Party since 1972, away from hard-won civil rights on ethnicity and gender — equality — has been profound. It has called many of us to leave a party we long associated with individual freedom, both to avoid individual moral harm and to find more positive options. We understand that totalitarianism often starts with seemingly small steps.
William (aka Bo) Yerxa
Waldoboro
