A Facebook post last week by state Sen. Willie Preston, D-Chicago,
created a stir, caused one of his fellow Democratic Senators to bow out of a
planned joint fundraiser and, ultimately, the entire fundraiser was canceled.
It's all a good illustration of the ill-informed, rapid-fire insanity of our
social media-fueled era.
Sen. Preston posted an incendiary story by a notorious British
tabloid about Olympics boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria. “Boxer 'deemed male'
leaves Italian female fighter in tears at Olympics,” was the Daily Mail
headline.
“This is wrong,” Preston wrote. “I respect all people however at a
certain point we have to be insane to accept this. As a father of daughters, I
cannot sit back and watch this anymore. We must save female sports. I plan on
working on legislation that protects women sports. Women shouldn't have to
compete against anyone who is biologically a man.”
Preston wasn’t alone. People, mostly conservatives, took to their
social media accounts with rage. Hard-right state Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich,
was one of them, reposting a tweet warning that allowing men to box with women
was going to get somebody killed. “Men don’t belong in women’s sports!” Niemerg
himself wrote. “End of discussion.” Some of his Republican colleagues also
posted similar thoughts online.
But, as far as I could tell, Preston was the only Illinois
Democratic state legislator to fall for the false outrage.
In reality, Khelif was born a female and her Algerian passport
lists her as a female. The International Olympic Committee uses athletes’
passports to determine gender. Algeria is a Muslim country where gender change
is illegal and even simply possessing a rainbow flag can result in a two-year
prison sentence. Also, do you really think that Algeria, which banned the Barbie
movie, would give a man a woman’s passport? C’mon.
Yes, Khelif was barred by the International Boxing Association
last year, and the IBA’s executive director, who is a longtime Russian boxing
official, recently claimed Khelif had both X and Y chromosomes, which some
women do have (and which studies have found gives them no consistent sporting
advantage). The IBA director earlier claimed Khelif had “elevated levels of
testosterone.” So, I guess it’s possible she was juicing, but the IBA is so
notoriously and thoroughly corrupt that the International Olympic Committee
refuses to work with it (and that’s saying something, considering the IOC’s
sordid history). Also of note, after the controversial Paris Olympics’ opening
ceremonies, the IBA’s executive director called IOC President Thomas Bach “a
chief sodomite.”
It took just a few minutes to find all that on Google.
Look, I truly do not care what you think about anything. This is a
free country and I love it that way. So, if you’re a legislator and you want to
ban people legally born as males from participating in female sports, that’s
your right as a state legislator to try. Go ahead and file your bill and work
your colleagues and invite the debate and let’s see how that all plays out.
However, if you, as a state legislator, publicly announce you’ll
be introducing important state legislation to address an issue that makes you
mad, I think we all have the right to expect that you first take at least a
minute or two to double-check whether your outrage is actually valid before you
pop off.
The members of the Senate Democratic caucus are more publicly
close knit than many nuclear families I know. Their public solidarity is really
quite something to behold.
So, I wasn’t surprised when progressive state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago,
refused to confirm that he’d bowed out of co-hosting a fundraiser with Preston.
But I was told by very reliable sources that he did do so.
The other two Preston fundraiser cohosts were Chicago state Sens.
Michael Simmons and Lakesia Collins. Simmons is the Senate’s first openly gay
member and Collins is a fiery and unapologetic progressive. Simmons and Collins
have not responded to repeated inquiries from myself and my associate Isabel
Miller about Preston’s post or about the event.
Preston also didn’t respond. But the Facebook post disappeared
after we started making inquiries.
Maybe he learned.
And then the same day I told my newsletter subscribers about
Preston and the fundraiser, the Senate Democrats told donors that the Aug. 7 event
had been canceled.
All this because somebody let their emotions control their brain.
It should be a lesson to everyone in these crazy times.
