Before an overflow crowd on Tuesday April 22, a 3-to-2 majority of the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education endorsed a resolution calling for prohibiting biological males or those having undergone or claiming gender transition to a female from competing in school-related girls’ sports programs.
Board Member Candy Olson, who has been vilified by those elements of the community celebrating themselves as progressive and lionized by a contingent of activists embracing what they call “traditional” American values, put forth the resolution “supporting Title IX and fairness in girls’ interscholastic sports.”
In recent years, there has been an intensifying controversy and division across the country with regard to transgender athletes, in particular males who have transitioned into females or otherwise taken on a female persona, competing in line with their gender identity.
Trans-inclusion threatens fair competition for women in sports, those opposed to the letting someone who was born biologically male cross into the category of female to participate in activities in which males have an innate advantage, such that accepting men or boys as females in an athletic context will lead to them dominating the competition and preventing a true measure of the athleticism of biological woman from taking place as has been traditionally over the last century-and-a-half since athletic competition has ceased being the exclusive province of men.
Those supporting the concept of transgender women (i.e., those who started out in life as male and who now have cast off or dispute that definition) insist that the principles of inclusion and acceptance dictate that those who consider themselves to be women should be accepted for who they are in the fullness of their identities and conception of themselves. There is no empirical evidence to show, they insist, that trans and intersex girls and women athletes have are superior athletic performers or possess an overwhelming advantage over natural females. Moreover, they argue, excluding those who define themselves as women on the basis that they are still men not only demeans them, but is a tacit acknowledgement that men are physically superior to woman, that woman are physically inferior and perpetuates sexist stereotypes that pits women against women. True women, they say, should be willing to fully accept their brothers who have chosen to become their sisters. Beyond that, they say, banning those who used to be men but who are now women from participating in the full range of activities that are open to women is prejudicial, meanspirited, unfair and bigoted. The supposition that transwomen who perform well should be ostracized and shown the door is tantamount to saying that natural women who are good athletes are of questionable femininity.
Complicating the matter is that over the course of what was nearly the first three quarters of the Twentieth Century in the United States, there was tremendous disparity in the opportunity in multiple walks of life, including in education and higher education, between men and women. Intense campaigning by feminists calling attention to discrimination in educational employment and educational opportunity resulted in the 1972 passage of Title IX of the federal education code. Aimed at ending gender discrimination in education. Title IX states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” All federal agencies that provide grants of financial assistance are required to enforce Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate.
The forms of discrimination covered under Title IX include but are not limited to: sex-based harassment; sexual violence; pregnancy discrimination; sex-based discrimination in a school’s science, technology, engineering, and math courses and programs; discriminatory application of dress code policies and/or enforcement; retaliation and the failure to provide equal athletic opportunity.
Even with the passage and implementation of Title IX, there are feminists who maintain that the athletic programs for woman at the high school and college have never come close to being equal, by any measure, to the programs available to men, who participate in far greater numbers and monopolize well in excess of 80 percent of the funding provided for athletic activity.
While in the mid-to-late 2010s, so-called woke advocates succeeded in shaming over 1,200 of the 3,982 full academic colleges in the United States into allowing transgender women to compete in their athletic programs and during the heyday of the Joseph Biden Administration, the definition of women with regard to Title XI was expanded to include transwoman, such excluding boys who had become girls and men who had become woman at the high school and college levels could no longer be prevented from competing in athletic programs intended exclusively for girls or women.
There was inevitable pushback against this and a culture war was all but declared, one which broke, for the most part, along party lines, with the Democratic Party in favor of allowing trans athletes the opportunity to compete and the Republican Party holding the line, maintaining that natural born females alone should be eligible to compete in girls’ or women’s sports.
The skirmishing on this issue became intense, and for a time, much to the chagrin of the social conservatives throughout the country, the Biden Administration was able to control the manner in which the dispute was to be adjudicated, by threatening to cut off the federal funding of institutions and school districts throughout the country that did not accept that transwomen should be able to compete side-by-side with and against biological women.
The social progressives, while winning, at least temporarily, the major battles on the issue, in time lost the war.
The Democratic Party, or at least its leadership, was confident that its attitude of tolerance and acceptance would win the day over what it saw as the small-mindedness, closemindedness and bigotry of their Republican rivals, and aided by the Biden Administration’s control of the machinery of federal government, which would give it the last word on the controversy, would ensure that transwoman were accommodated and accepted on the various fields of athletic competition. At its root, this approach by the Democratic leadership was that a solid majority of the country’s citizens were forward-looking and ready to embrace new and innovative ideas, progressive, tolerant and open to cooperation, and ready to trade support for others philosophies in return for an acceptance of their own. While they understood that a majority of Republican felt differently, they figured that the vast majority of Democrats who supported transgender participation in women’s athletics would more than offset that way of thinking. What the Democrats had missed was that, in fact, the sentiment against transgender women being able to compete against women, was overwhelming in the case of Republicans – 91 percent – and high – 63 percent – among those affiliated with no party whatsoever or those who were members of the Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, Green or American Independent Party.
That, however, was less significant – breathtakingly less significant – than the actual attitude of Democrats across the board with regard to the issue. Fully 66 percent of Democrats surveyed over multiple polls across the 48 states other than Alaska and Hawaii, were opposed to those who had started out in life as men being able to participate in women’s sports.
Throughout the 2024 electoral season, both while Joseph Biden was the apparent nominee for reelection before the Democratic Convention and after he was supplanted by Kamala Harris, the Democrats continued to ride atop the allow-transgender-women-to-compete-with-women pony. That so many Americans of all parties – the Republicans, the Democrats and the more obscure ones – were not aboard with the Democrat’s agenda on that issue compounded the perception that Biden was not with it cognitively. When Harris captured the party’s nomination in a handoff from Biden that did not include having to compete in the 2024 primary elections and she perpetuated the transgender scholastic athletic participation policy propounded further that the party was out of touch with the voters they were asking to elect them.
This was despite the fact that 26 states had reacted to the Biden Administration’s interpretation of Title IX that transwomen athletes needed to be protected on a coequal basis, within the context of women’s sports, with natural born women by passing laws preventing men who had become women from competing against men. While the factors that allowed Donald Trump to become the first and only [resident since Grover Cleveland to be returned to the White House after having been voted out of office are myriad and it is in reality impossible to say how he managed that politically impressive feat, there are a large number of analysts who believe Donald Trump won the November 2024 election because he embraced the position regarding transsexual athletic competition eligibility that most closely mimicked the attitude of 77 percent of the American population.
Even before he was sworn into office, on January 14, 2025, the House of Representatives voted 218-to-206, basically along party lines with a handful of defections by Democrats who were in support, to ban transgender students from participating on women’s school sports teams consistent with their gender identity.
Redlands is a microcosm of the United States. Among its 76,699 population, there is a good smattering of liberals and hardcore Democrats who take an actively progressive approach toward a number of social and political issues. They are matched by a hefty so-called conservative presence, typified by members of the Tea Party, led by Greg Brittain, and an accompanying, which is in at least some cases overlapping, contingent of those involved in the Make America Great Again movement. The vast majority of its residents, however, lie somewhere in the middle. Of its 48,064  registered voters, 18,167 or 37.8 percent are affiliated with the Democratic Party. Registered Republicans number 16,109 or 33.5 percent. Of the city’s remaining voters, 9,687 or 20.2 percent have no affiliation with any political party while the remaining 4,101 or 8.5 percent are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom or other more obscure parties.
The Redlands School Board and its response to roiling questions of the day reflects the vicissitudes and  back-and-forth nature of multiple elements of the culture war that is raging in Redlands and across the country. Two of the board’s members, Melissa Ayala-Quintero and Patty Holohan, are classic liberals, and they have been supported and assisted politically by large numbers of the district’s teachers who likewise hew to the left side of the polemic with regard to public policy and social organization, along with Redlands’ relatively small but vocal cadre of political progressives.  Until relatively recently, the progressives predominated on the school board, largely as a consequence of the activism on the part of the district’s teachers, their union and the local Democratic Party, which concentrated its firepower on school board races in large measure because it was being outhustled by the Republicans on other local and state races impacting Redlands at the level of the city council, county board of supervisors and in the state legislature. As a consequence of the proliferation of policies with which much of the community’s more conservative element took exception, both Candy Olson, representing the District’s Area 5, and Jeannette Wilson, representing the District’s Area 4, were elected with substantial grassroots support, including that of the Tea Party and local Republicans, in the 2024 election. Their election at once changed the complexion of the board, rendering longtime Board Member and current Board President Michele Rendler the crucial and controlling swing vote on the panel.
In the case of transsexual rights being brought to the fore and the argument being pressed by the “woke” contingent that the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution, Title IX (at least insofar as was interpreted by the Biden Administration), the basic social contract and common decency dictated that the district not only tolerate but encourage transgender girls to participate on the various district schools’ girls’ athletic teams, the community’s conservative faction was having none of it.
Not only were Wilson and Olson now in place on the school board, the Biden Administration, with its interpretation that Title IX required that transgender athletes be allowed to compete in accordance with their gender identity, was in the rearview mirror. Having replaced it was the Trump Administration that was hostile to the concept of trans-inclusion in the context of organized women’s sports. There was mounting opposition to transgender athletes, specifically transgender women, competing as female athletes.
By February of this year, 27 states had bans in place preventing transgender women from competing in women’s sports at any level. A few other states had similar bans that were not as comprehensive. California was one of only a few remaining states that was attempting to preserve protections for transwoman which would allow them to compete against women if they so chose.
Republicans, nonetheless, tried – and failed – to bring California into what more and more people now perceive to be the mainstream on the issue. Republican Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, (Rancho Santa Margarita), and Bill Essayli, (Corona), introduced bills they had drafter drafted bills to prevent transgender students from competing on sports teams inconsistent with their gender identity. Both failed to get out of committee.
Essayli is no longer in the Assembly, having resigned to accept appointment as the U.S. Attorney for Central California.
In Redlands, Olson, reading the political winds and perceiving that the state’s Democratic leadership, whom her supporters despise, have badly misread the actuality of public sentiment, leapt into the fray.
Earlier this month, Olson came forward with her resolution that called for  “ensuring fairness, safety, and equal opportunities for all student-athletes,” meaning girl students. Her resolution referenced  “biological differences between male and female athletes” maintaining that this gave males “inherent advantages in competitive sports.” Although, as a resolution, the board’s action in endorsing it does not elevate it to the status of policy, it gives clear indication that the district, as determined by the board majority, opposes transgender students participating in female sports. It also cited Title IX — or Olson’s interpretation of it as opposed to the Biden interpretation of it as ensuring that “female athletes have equal opportunities to participate and succeed in sports,” thus “preserving the original intent of Title IX.”
That’s not the way Cathy Dean saw it. She told the board, “I’m here to talk about Title IX. You’ve heard from lot’s of parents who are trying to appeal to three of your sense of morality, and I just think that’s never going to work because three of you have no morals. So, what I wanted to say is just: We recognize, those of us in the community who have critical thinking skills that you’re trying to put your Project 2025 nonsense at a local level so it will get easier passed at a federal level, and we’re not letting that happen here. We see you and we’ll stop you. Fuck you, not you fuck you, not you fuck you,” she closed, pointing at Olson, Ayala Quintero, Rendler, Holohan and Wilson as she did so.
There was a good deal of the posturing among both sides during the meeting, with some of the supporters of transathletes referring to those in favor of the resolution as immoral, homophobic and bigoted and some of those in support of the resolution suggesting those wiling to accept or encourage transgenderism as mentally ill and without a spiritual compass.
Greg Abdouch said in support of the resolution, “Our daughters deserve to be protected. Our daughters deserve to play in sports. If you [i.e., transathletes] want to play in a sport, than open up an open division. I think it’s funny that there are so many parents talking about this in here, yet you keep saying there’s no transathletes in Redlnds. Then, what are you doing here? Stand on values. Stand on common sense.”
Former school board candidate Valerie Taber, who ran unsuccessfully for the school board implied that disallowing transwoman to compete in girls or women’s sports was tantamount to hate speech. Olson’s resolution perpetuates that hate, she said,
“How would you fairly ensure that every single student on a girls’ sports team is, in fact, someone with an XX chromosome?” she asked. There is no question that individuals who started out in life as men who have now decided they are women are, in fact, Taber said, women.“ Gender essentialism is nonsense,” she said. “You are harming women with these policies.”
Sonja Shaw, the current president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education president, enunciated her support for the resolution. Shaw and three of her board colleagues have arranged for the Chino Valley Unified School District to importune President Donald Trump to have his administration intervene in making certain biological men and biological boys are not permitted to participate in women’s sports.
“This resolution to protect girls in sports is not controversial.,” Shaw said. “It’s common sense. It’s fair. It’s about ensuring that our daughters, who train, sacrifice and give everything to their sport, are not robbed of the opportunities.”
In explaining why she brought the resolution forward, Olson said, “You would have to be an absolute science denier to say that the boys and the girls are of equal strength and of equal speed. It’s just not the same.”
Rendler, Wilson and Olson voted in favor of the resolution, with Holohan and Ayala-Quintero dissenting. The district will forward the board’s approval of the resolution to the Governor of California, the California State Legislature, the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation.