Tag: Sophie Cunningham

A Mid-term Election Reflection

An interesting question between now and the mid-term elections isn’t just who is going to win the various congressional, state, and local races. It’s what the Democratic Party has evidently come to believe in terms of its values, both politically, and in many cases, personally.

It’s also what the Party has led fellow Americans to believe and adopt as their own.

As intended or unintended fallout, something has been lost along the way.

Once upon a time “Live and Let Live” was part of the shared American creed. As a peaceful-seeking society, we collectively considered this value to be indispensable, since the virtue generally serves to nurture the development of positive human norms, attitudes, and behaviors.

It is oftentimes difficult to get people to agree on a shared set of values. But America had succeeded in doing so, and the success is what made pluralism survivable.

Unfortunately, over the last several decades the Democratic Party has reduced the concept of “Live and Let Live” to a single word: “Tolerance.” It didn’t just substitute a synonym for the original phrase. It altered the fundamental meaning of it.

The newly defined American value appealed to almost everyone. After all, it felt as if we were saying the same thing; that you may hold a differing belief or opinion than that of another, but you were willing to show respect to those who were of an opposing view.

It’s a binary axiom in life. We are all moving in one direction or another.

In the case of the Democratic Party and their newly adopted creed, “Tolerance” eventually devolved into what the Party mandated all must believe.

No more room for dissenting views. And no one allowed into its circle without accepting every one of the self-established tenets of the so-called progressive creed.

Ironically, the Democrats actually became the vice that they had initially been fighting against; i.e., they became the most intolerant among us.

It all seems to be catching up with them, and the timing of the elections in a way may be serendipitous.

Some folks are slowly beginning to realize the shift that has taken place in terms of the freedom to hang on to your own individual beliefs, attitudes, and philosophies without being dictated to and/or socially ostracized.

Bill Maher, who has been known to vote Democrat his entire life, has endured a kind of excommunication in slow motion over the past several years. His crime? He was noticing what was going on, and he wasn’t staying silent about it.

Maher proposed a “stand your ground law for cancel culture” so that “when the woke mob comes after you for some ridiculous offense, you’ll stand your ground and stop apologizing.”

He also coined a segment-closing rule on his “Real Time” HBO show: “Memo to social justice warriors: When what you’re doing sounds like an Onion headline, stop.”

He has been accused of leaving the left behind, when in reality the left did it to him.

Proof that the Democrat creed-turned-dictate has continued down a wayward path can be seen in the manner in which the Party attempts to police even the smallest of thoughts and actions of the people-at-large.

Here are a few examples of additional prominent independent-thinking celebrities who have suffered negative consequences.

Actress Sydney Sweeney garnered a lot of attention when she appeared in a jeans ad and said the following: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring.” The internet lit up, claiming that she was subliminally endorsing eugenics.

A slew of derogatory comments about her followed. Her response was direct and effective. “I’m against hate and divisiveness,” she said.

Athlete Sophie Cunningham plays guard for the Indiana Fever and is one of the most-followed players in the WNBA. In a single ESPN profile, she offered an opinion about biological male athletes participating in women’s sports.

Cunningham said that she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

The left-leaning media generally responded in lockstep, with The Guardian dutifully dubbing her an “anti-transgender culture war ambassador.”

Comedian extraordinaire Jerry Seinfeld, when feeling that his art was being cramped, dared to pin the blame for strangling comedy directly on “the extreme left.”

Talking to the New Yorker, Seinfeld made the charge that the disappearance of the TV sitcom was the result of ideological policing.

He said that it used to be when you went home at the end of the day, “You just expected, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.’ Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC c**p, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”

Funny how when people give themselves permission to buck the trend, courage sets in, and many times it turns out to be contagious.

The mid-term elections just may be a time when we remember how important it is to hold fast to our own self-determined principles, and to put them into practice for the good of society and our beloved country.

WNBA Rules Mandate that Enes Freedom and Royce White Be Let In

Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White just threw their hats into the 2027 WNBA Draft

Under the basketball league’s own eligibility language, the two former NBA first-round picks are currently identifying as women.

Freedom and White’s declaration of gender has the WNBA dribbling across the cultural court to schedule an emergency task-force meeting of team presidents and general managers in order to discuss “transgender athlete participation.”

In a world of logic, reason, and ethics, the league has an obligation to apply its own set of rules consistently.

If the WNBA’s current framework treats self-identification as sufficient grounds for acceptance into the league, then Freedom and White currently meet every stated requirement.

Therefore, the league has a duty to afford both of them the opportunity to try out, or it must concede that the definition of the word “woman” refers to an individual’s chromosomal composition and attendant physiological characteristics.

On its face, Article XIII, Section 1(a) of the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is unambiguous. It states the following: “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.”

It offers no further definition of the term “women.” There are no hormone thresholds, no standards regarding surgical modifications, and no explicit self-identification policy. The document is completely silent on the subject of gender identity.

Freedom reviewed the stated guidelines and said, “If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA.”

White followed with his own announcement that he is “transgender” and “a woman,” as it pertains to his eligibility to gain admittance into the league.

Under the text that the league itself negotiated and signed, the logic of the two former NBA players is airtight. Freedom has also officially penned a letter to the league and shared the content in a social media post, saying “rules are rules!” in the caption. White is likely to follow suit.

It turns out that these two athletes are prompting the WNBA, as well as society at large, to engage in honest discussions about divisive and highly emotional issues in hopes that we arrive at mutually satisfying rational conclusions.

For years women’s sports organizations have embraced expansive inclusive rhetoric, while leaving the foundational categories of “woman” and “transgender” undefined. This ambiguity was sustainable only as long as no high-profile male athletes tested the boundaries.

Freedom (6’10” tall, 11-year NBA veteran) and White (6’ 8” tall, first-round pick of the Houston Rockets in 2012 ) are now attempting to hold the WNBA to its own stated standard.

The reaction of the league suggests that its standard was never meant to be taken literally or expected to be challenged.

Star WNBA player Sophie Cunningham is the catalyst who brought the biological males in female sports debate to a boiling point, setting the stage for the declarations by Freedom and White.

Cunningham’s stated desire is to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sports who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

The remarks predictably ignited immediate as well as sustained controversy. The female athlete’s willingness to utter aloud a biological sex-based view of women’s sports eligibility turned a simmering cultural issue into an all-out WNBA crisis.

Despite the shrill language from those on the far-left, the issue is resolvable by simply applying the principles of scientific knowledge, civil rights law, and common sense reasoning.

The biology of the human body is not a relative construct. Generally speaking, puberty actually produces distinct advantages in biological males in terms of height, muscle mass, bone density, lung capacity, and upper-body strength.

These differences are part of the reason why sex-segregated categories came into being in our society in the first place. Likewise with federal civil rights legislation, specifically Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination and protects individuals (in the initial legislation, more often than not, girls) against sexual harassment and/or assault.

The WNBA was created so that elite female athletes could compete on a fair playing field. Allowing intact male physiology into the category undermines the very purpose of the league.

Still, the current collective bargaining agreement of the WNBA does not address or codify this biological firewall, thus creating the open door that Freedom and White are walking through.

Consistency demands one of two outcomes. The WNBA must either allow for self-declaration of gender, or it must rewrite its rules to explicitly state that eligibility is based on biology.

The players’ union has responded so far with language about diversity. This is an evasion of the issue. It is also an apparent attempt to divert discussion onto an emotional track as opposed to a fact-based one.

Freedom and White have essentially become a stress test for the league. If the planned emergency meeting of leaders produces more nuance, the league will have earned the “hypocrisy” label.

The reasoned outcomes are clear. The draft must be open to individuals who simply declare themselves to be women. Or the CBA must be amended to specify that the “W” in WNBA stands for “Women,” i.e., biologically female individuals.

Let the rules mean what they say, or change them so that they protect the athletes that the league was built to serve.

Here’s hoping science and logic rule the day.