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David Farmer lives in Portland. He wrote a weekly column for the Bangor Daily News for 11 years.
Not since Paris spirited Helen away from Sparta have so many ships set sail — so much war waged — over so few people.
There are two transgender teenagers playing high school sports in Maine. That’s it. Two. Two out of more than 170,000 public school students.
There are no transgender athletes in the University of Maine System. None.
And yet these two students and the entire state of Maine are being attacked by the most powerful person in the world, the richest person in the world and a growing segment of the federal government.
Two young people are participating in high school sports, which is an activity that’s protected by state and federal law and by regulations adopted by the Maine Principal’s Association, which are in place to keep sports safe and fair while also allowing athletes to participate according to their gender identity.
Trans kids play sports for the same reason that other kids do. It’s fun. It builds character. It creates a sense of belonging. It teaches important life lessons.
That’s it. No hidden agenda. No motivation to break the rules to win. No effort to achieve some sort of advantage. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous. No one is trans because they think it’ll give them an advantage on a high school sports team.
It would be so much easier for Maine to simply turn its back on these two kids. To toss them aside.
The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, you might think. Hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding are at stake. Every person in the state could suffer. The polls show voters have concerns about transgender girls playing sports. The politics are bad.
The path toward authoritarianism is lined with small steps and small compromises. It’s just two kids. It’s just high school sports. Jobs will be lost. Real harm will be done if we don’t surrender.
We could simply say, our “livelihoods and the well-being of [our] families [are] simply a much higher priority than a group who represented a tiny fraction of the population and who was constantly demonized as a ‘dangerous threat.’” (This is one explanation offered by the U.S. Holocaust Museum about how people rationalized accepting Nazi actions in Germany.)
President Donald Trump has demonstrated his disdain for the law and for due process. His administration breathes chaos, resentment and fear. He’s tanking the economy, betraying allies and coddling dictators and murders. He will hurt whoever it takes to get what he wants.
I’ve heard a lot of people say — and not without reason — that we should stand up for transgender people because it aligns with our personal interest. They could come for you next. All that’s true.
But that’s not why we should stand steadfast.
While I don’t know their names or really anything about them, these two kids are my kids. They are Maine kids. They are all of our kids. And no matter how many ships may land on our shores, no matter how many threats may become reality, we should not relent.
The rule of law — and of common decency — must prevail.
