By Steven Flagg
Guest Column
Navigating today’s culture wars often feels like choosing between bad and worse. What should we support? What should we fear? And who decides—politicians, preachers, pundits, or our own quiet sense of empathy?
During last year’s presidential election, Ohio’s U.S. Senate race between Bernie Moreno and Sherrod Brown didn’t just amplify political divisions—it turned deeply personal questions into emotional flashpoints. One of the loudest was the rallying cry to save our daughters from transgender athletes.
The issue, stripped of nuance, was cast as a binary: protect fairness or promote inclusion. But fairness isn’t that simple.
I find myself in a place of fragile neutrality, if such a place still exists. I believe people should be who they feel comfortable being. At the same time, I wrestle with tough questions about fairness, especially in competitive sports, where biological traits can affect performance. But if we’re going to talk about fairness, we need to begin with facts.
Nationally, fewer than 160 transgender students compete in high school sports—out of more than eight million student-athletes. In Ohio, just seven transgender girls—individuals assigned male at birth who identify and live as female—participated in girls’ sports last year. None won a state title. In college athletics, fewer than ten out of over 500,000 NCAA athletes are openly transgender. These are not the numbers of a crisis. These are individuals—almost invisible—who’ve been made into symbols of fear.
So why do transgender students want to participate in sports at all? The answer is surprisingly ordinary: to belong. Sports offer more than trophies—they provide identity, self-esteem, community, and connection. Human beings are wired for inclusion. Transgender youth are no different.
But that question still lingers: What about fairness?
The NCAA and the Ohio High School Athletic Association tried to balance inclusion and competition until 2024 state legislation and a 2025 executive order halted inclusion policies in school sports. Transgender girls were required to undergo hormone therapy or demonstrate no competitive advantage before participating. Though designed to level the playing field, the rules couldn’t fully reverse traits from male puberty—like height or muscle mass. That scientific gray area is real.
So is the emotional discomfort felt by some cisgender girls. Even if a competitive imbalance doesn’t exist, the perception alone can create tension. Fairness requires more than policy—it requires social trust. If we ignore how young women experience these changes, we risk trading one group’s inclusion for another’s sense of security.
It’s also understandable that some parents and coaches feel confused by evolving policies. They seek consistency and fear losing hard-won gains. But fairness doesn’t require exclusion, it allows for thoughtful adaptation.
There are potential paths forward. Some athletic associations are exploring open or co-ed divisions based on skill rather than gender. Others suggest third-party eligibility reviews, such as those used for disability classifications, to ensure consistency and fairness. And instead of cutting support for girls’ sports in response to controversy, why not invest more in coaching, training, and access? These ideas aren’t perfect, but they offer a chance to innovate rather than exclude.
Still, we must ask a more fundamental question: Why would someone choose to be transgender in a society that treats difference as a threat?
It’s a fair question, if asked in good faith. Because the answer dismantles a damaging assumption. No one willingly chooses rejection, harassment or violence. If someone accepts those risks, it’s not a lifestyle. It’s a lived truth.
Scientific research supports this. Studies suggest gender identity may be influenced by prenatal hormone exposure and brain development. Brain scans often show alignment with experienced gender rather than with their assigned sex at birth. Digit ratios—believed to reflect fetal development—also differ. Twin studies show higher gender identity agreement among identical twins than fraternal ones.
While these findings are compelling, researchers caution against overgeneralizing: the science of gender identity is complex, evolving, and not fully understood. But taken together, the evidence points toward one clear idea—being transgender isn’t a trend or rebellion. It’s part of someone’s biology—an identity shaped more by nature than by choice.
Critics worry that including transgender athletes undermines Title IX and the opportunities it guarantees girls and women. That concern isn’t without merit. When inclusion feels like erasure, backlash is predictable. But again, the data shows no wave of transgender dominance. The rules—designed to require hormone therapy and eligibility review—appeared to be working as intended, allowing for limited participation while minimizing unfair advantages. The reality is far more measured than the panic suggests.
So, we return once more to fairness, but through a wider lens. Is it fair to deny people participation, dignity, or care because of something they didn’t choose? Is fairness only fairness when it protects the majority?
These questions are challenging. They demand empathy, humility, science, and compromise. But they cannot be answered through slogans or culture war politics. Because fairness isn’t just about who wins the race; it’s about whether everyone gets to run it.
And it starts with one question we should all take personally: If your child didn’t fit in, would you want the rules written to keep them out—or rewritten to let them in?