Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, Elliot Page, Naomi Watts feature in ACLU ad pushing trans athletes

Biological males in women’s sports have become a losing issue. But some ideological celebs and out-of-touch athletes still haven’t gotten the message. 

A new campaign from the ACLU defending transgender athletes‘ participation in the sports category of their choice features actors Elliot Page and Naomi Watts — two elites with nothing to lose as they sacrifice the athletic opportunities of women younger than themselves. 

The 30-second ad, which will air during the Unrivaled women’s basketball series, also features soccer star Megan Rapinoe and her girlfriend and WNBA star Sue Bird — retired female athletes so blinded by ideology that they’re willing to deprive the next generation of the fair shot they enjoyed as women before trans athletes were a major concern.

These activists — particularly the former athletes — should know better. But trans ideology has hijacked common sense.

“When you’re young you believe you can do anything, and then the world tries to set limits for you,” advocates in the ad say, implying that sex delineation in sports is some petty moral travesty.

Then Rapinoe, a former winger for the US national women’s soccer team, chimes in, “But on the field, the track, the court, here you get to be exactly who you are.”

Naomi Watts, who is the mother of a trans child, will have you know that the fight to participate in female sports is “about freedom,” as she says in the ad.

It all sounds very nice — if you completely disregard the history of Title IX and biological differences.

Title IX, which was signed into law in 1972, requires schools receiving federal funds to provide equal opportunities and programs for men and women. It not only led to a huge growth of women in sports but also broader gender equality.

It seems Rapinoe has forgotten that time when the FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the US Women’s National Team in a scrimmage in 2017. Rapinoe and her fellow female soccer stars, best in the nation, lost 5-2 to a bunch of teenagers. Two years later, they would go on to win the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Why not let those boys identify as girls and steamroll their biologically female classmates? It’s easy for Rapinoe and Sue Bird to make the case. They’re 40 and 45, respectively, both are retired from their professional athletic careers and neither has a daughter of their own to defend.

The ad comes as the ACLU heads to the Supreme Court to argue for the rights of transgender athletes to participate in the sports category that matches their gender identity.

It’s the latest sad indication that a once great American institution is putting ideology over the civil libertarian values it was founded to protect. 

Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project and an attorney involved in the Supreme Court case, came out in 2020 to advocate for banning Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage,” which took a skeptical look at youth gender-affirming medicine.

“Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” Strangio, who is transgender, wrote.

In the 1970s, Jewish lawyers for the ACLU defended the rights of Nazis to march through the heavily Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, then full of Holocaust survivors — not because they agreed with the Nazis, of course, but because they believed in civil liberties above all.

Now the ACLU’s star attorneys are running around advocating book banning.

What these activist lawyers, pretentious stars, and tone-deaf former athletes fail to realize is that they’re hurting the community they’re trying to help. 

They could be taking up worthy causes on behalf of the trans community. People shouldn’t be denied opportunities, resources, or even basic respect based on their gender identity. 

But you start to lose the public when you start arguing that competitive sports is some intractable human right, and, by extension, that trans athletes’ rights trump those of female athletes.

Fully 69% of Americans say that biological sex should determine sports participation — a number has went up by 10 percentage points between 2021 and 2025.

Advocating for biological men in women’s sports is a massive overstep that defies logic, and it’s eroding the public’s tolerance for trans causes across the board.

Between 2022 and 2025, Americans of all political persuasions became less supportive of people using the bathroom of their choice and schools teaching gender ideology in the classroom.

Most significantly, the public even soured on legal protections for trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public spaces such as stores and restaurants. 

Prioritizing the rights of the few trans people who insist on inserting themselves into competitive women’s sports is coming at the cost of the countless trans people who are merely trying to live their lives in peace.

A few whiny activist actors and athletes are ruining it for everyone. Perhaps a Supreme Court loss will shut them down once and for all, for the benefit of female athletes and trans people alike.