Dan Slavin, a development subcontractor in California, has parented his daughter Kaitlyn by way of an expertise nobody of their household anticipated this faculty yr.
Over the summer time, they obtained phrase Martin Luther King Excessive Faculty, the place Kaitlyn competes in cross nation, can be getting a brand new switch scholar who can be competing on Kaitlyn’s crew. That scholar was a transgender athlete.
Slavin says he and different mother and father contacted the varsity about it instantly.
“We went in there with concerns about safety and locker room issues,” Slavin informed Fox Information Digital. “They were very tight-lipped and quiet. They understood our concerns and said they were working on putting things in place for our children’s safety, but not much. They just kind of sat there.”
Slavin, a California native who additionally competed in cross nation, in addition to monitor and basketball, in highschool, wished his daughter to compete in sports activities to profit from classes in work ethic and teamwork.
However the concept of Kaitlyn having to share a locker room and subject with a organic male made him “concerned.”
California state regulation protects the inclusion of transgender athletes in women and girls’s sports activities and requires public faculties to adjust to these protections.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been a staunch protector of those insurance policies throughout his tenure and vetoed a invoice that will require faculties to inform athletes and their households when a transgender athlete is on their crew.
Newsom signed 9 LGBTQ+ rights payments into regulation inside a matter of days in 2023, and this yr he signed the Help Tutorial Future and Educators for At present’s Youth Act (SAFETY Act) into regulation, which bans academics from notifying college students and fogeys of a transgender scholar’s organic intercourse.
“I’d love to sit down and have lunch with him to talk to him about this and see how that goes,” Slavin stated. “I would probably just tell him that I get you want everybody to feel included, but you’re missing out on how many people it’s actually affecting and hurting.”
Slavin, his daughter and different women on the crew realized how these legal guidelines have an effect on feminine athletes after the transgender athlete transferred in. Kaitlyn’s teammate and co-captain, Taylor, misplaced her varsity spot to that athlete this season.
“It’s been tough on her. She’s been there with her teammates and her teammate’s in tears,” Slavin stated. “She’s been attempting to stability out how one can nonetheless love all folks but in addition how one can increase consciousness.
“There isn’t a hateful bone in her little body.”
So Kaitlyn, Taylor and a few of their different teammates determined to face up in opposition to it as many different younger feminine athletes throughout the nation have this yr. They did it by creating customized T-shirts that stated “Save Girls Sports.”
However once they confirmed as much as the highschool sporting these shirts, directors allegedly scolded them over it and in contrast the shirts to swastikas, in accordance with a lawsuit filed in opposition to the varsity by the households of the 2 women.
“I didn’t even know how to digest that right away,” Slavin stated. “There were no words. I still can’t even digest it this day. It’s unfathomable. It’s strange. It’s weird. I’m sure there were better illustrations they could use instead of that one.”
The lawyer representing Kaitlyn and Taylor within the lawsuit, Julianne Fleischer, informed Fox Information Digital the rhetoric from faculty directors is “incredibly dangerous.”
“When you have adults that compare a message ‘Save Girls Sports’ that promotes equality, fairness, common sense; when you have adults that compare that message to a swastika, which represents the genocide of millions of Jews, really, there are no words. I don’t know how you respond to that,” Fleischer stated.
The administration’s comparability and the following lawsuit prompted different college students to get entangled.
A whole lot of scholars at Martin Luther King Excessive Faculty started to put on the T-shirts each Wednesday.
The college responded by enacting a gown code that resulted in lots of these college students being despatched to detention. However that didn’t cease them. The scholars saved sporting the shirts weekly.
The college not too long ago stopped imposing its gown code on the shirts.
Slavin stated he noticed round 400 college students sporting them at Martin Luther King Excessive Faculty, and sources have informed Fox Information the encompassing faculties of Arlington Excessive Faculty, Riverside Polytechnical Excessive Faculty and Romona Excessive Faculty have additionally seen their college students sporting them.
For Slavin, who has seen his daughter win titles and MVP awards in her youth sports activities profession, this motion is his proudest second as the daddy of an athlete. But it surely’s additionally include some blowback from transgender inclusion activists on social media.
“The message gets conflicted as an attack on people, and it’s not about that at all. We want all people to feel love, all people to feel included, but some people just don’t see the common sense side of it,” Slavin stated.
However Slavin stated that gained’t cease him and his household from persevering with their activism on this problem.
The Riverside Unified Faculty District is holding a board assembly subsequent Thursday, and fogeys are anticipated to attend and converse out in opposition to insurance policies which have enabled transgender inclusion in women’ sports activities.
Past that, Slavin stated his household might even use it as a brand new platform for political activism within the 2026 California gubernatorial election if the problem hasn’t been resolved.
“If nothing changes here in the next couple of years, it absolutely should be part of the next election,” he stated.
“I want to see policies change,” Slavin added. “I keep saying the system is broken, and it’s doing more harm than good. And I want to see people understand that and admit that. Sometimes, we make mistakes, and it’s OK to admit that, but we need to make changes and get out of those mistakes we make.”
