Riley Gaines, the University of Kentucky 12-time NCAA All American and 5-time SEC champion female competitive swimmer, moved the crowd at the Family Research Center Pray, Vote, Stand Action Summit this past Friday in Washington, D.C. She shared her story of how hard she worked before 6’ 4” Lia Thomas, formerly, Will Thomas, switched to the women’s swim team at University of Pennsylvania, beating out female Olympians nationwide and defeating them, every female swimmer, by “body lengths”.
I covered the summit on the ground as there was a long list of speakers including four presidential candidates; Rep. Byron Donalds, Dr. Ben Carson, North Carolina’s firebrand Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, among others, but Riley Gaines really connected with Christian conservative attendees with her emotional and moving story.
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Riley swam against Lia Thomas and was devastated when the race ended with a virtual tie and Thomas was awarded the win and the trophy. Gaines said that her parents, the coaches, her teammates, all knew that the unfair competition was wrong from many aspects including the locker room to their silencing.
Riley lamented that Lia Thomas reduced everything they worked their entire lives for “a photo op to validate the feelings and the identity of a male at the expense of our own. That’s what pushed me over the edge and ultimately got me to this point where I was done waiting….. I thought surely a coach would say something. I thought surely someone with political power would do something….I thought someone who was supposed to be protecting us would protect us.” She continued, “How could we as women, as female athletes, be standing on this podium, smiling and applauding yet hoping someone jumps in to save us. This has to come from us; we can’t expect someone else to do it if we are not willing to do it.”
To compound the issues, the team was not forewarned that they would be sharing a changing space in the locker room with male swimmer Lia Thomas. “No one told us this was the arrangement….The only time we became aware we would be undressing inches away from a 6’4”, 22-year-old male ‘fully in tact’ and exposing male genitalia, was when we were undressing inches away.”
“The experience of course was awkward. It was embarrassing and uncomfortable. It was violating, but the best word to describe it without overplaying what it was, it was traumatic. Not only traumatic because what we were forced to see, but traumatic to know just how it easy it was for those officials and the people who created these guidelines to totally dismiss our rights to privacy without even a second thought,” Riley continued, “but more importantly it’s the lie that matters….why is this happening?” She went on to say that this is spiritual warfare, “Moral vs. Evil. It is not compassionate to ask a young girl to undress in front of a man. It is not inclusive to ask us to smile and step aside and allow men onto our podiums. That’s exclusive to the very female athletes who Title IX was passed to protect. You are seeing those same benefits being stripped away causing us as women, as young girls, to become collateral damage in the process.”
Title IX is a thirty-seven-word federal civil rights law that prevents discrimination on the basis of sex, giving women opportunities in athletics and educations. How ironic.