Transgender athlete bans could just be the beginning, advocates warn – USA TODAY
A wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the U.S., including 18 bans on transgender athletes, have left advocates, allies asking, how did we get here? The answer actually isn’t a complicated one.
When Layshia Clarendon first heard about Idaho’s anti-transgender legislation that had been signed into law, making it the first state in the U.S. to institute an outright ban on transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, the WNBA veteran felt a wave of emotions.
It was spring 2020, and Clarendon’s reaction went like this: First, fury that someone would go after the transgender community. Then disgust, because this particular law targeted kids. Finally, annoyance “that this is the country I live in, where people are so thirsty for power, they’ll do things that harm very real people,” Clarendon recalled.