Firestorm of fear

The leader of the Springfield YMCA says the longtime nonprofit won’t exclude transgender people from gender-specific locker rooms despite a nationally publicized and conservative-fueled firestorm over a 16-year-old swimmer’s protest and her family’s decision to leave the Y.

“We are not planning to make any noticeable changes,” YMCA Chief Executive Officer Angie Sowle told Illinois Times on July 14. “We will continue to follow the law of the state of Illinois. We’re also governed by a board of directors and a board of trustees and our national affiliate.”

Sowle said YMCA staff members “will continue to do what we’ve been doing for 150 years, and that’s serve this community to the best of our ability.”

She said the YMCA won’t comply with requests from the Illinois Freedom Caucus and Abbigail Wheeler, 16, a former member of the YMCA’s SPY Typhoons Swim Team, that the Y bar transgender women from using women’s locker rooms.

Sowle said excluding transgender people who identify with a certain gender identity from restrooms and locker rooms set aside for that gender would violate the Illinois Human Rights Act.

Wheeler and her father, Dan Wheeler, spoke to a raucous, cheering crowd of about 300 people during a July 13 outdoor news conference called by the Freedom Caucus – seven conservative Republican members of the Democratic-controlled Illinois House – across the street from the Kerasotes branch of the Y on Springfield’s west side.

There was no formal counter-protest during the event, but there were some trans supporters and trans individuals in the crowd.

Lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus, who have said the YMCA has succumbed to “woke ideology,” believe the YMCA is misinterpreting state law. The lawmakers said they will push for legislation to clarify the law.

Officials from the YMCA and American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, however, said the Y’s interpretation is correct and has been affirmed by court decisions and the Illinois Human Rights Commission, a state agency.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, the House’s only openly gay member, said the Freedom Caucus will have to “win some seats” to change the law. “We have a model human rights act,” she said.

Cassidy said there is  “no evidence of any danger” posed by transgender people in public locker rooms. She said “hyperbole” by the Freedom Caucus and their supporters will lead to more violence against trans people, as well as more suicide and self-harm.

“They’re going to have blood on their hands,” Cassidy said.

In Abbigail Wheeler’s latest telling of a story that changed several times in the preceding days, she said July 13 that she became “scared and upset” after seeing what appeared to be a transgender woman changing in the YMCA’s women’s locker room when Wheeler went to use the restroom during swim practice April 27 at the Kerasotes branch.

Wheeler said she wanted to clarify what she called a “miscommunication” from an earlier interview she did on Fox News in which she said the person she saw was nude.

“To be clear, I did not see the man naked, and no male genitalia was exposed,” Wheeler said. “However, I did see the man changing in the women’s locker room.”

Teary-eyed and voice shaking, Wheeler told the crowd, which responded with cheers and shouts of encouragement, that she immediately told the swim coach what she saw. Wheeler said the male coach responded that he was “aware of it, and there was nothing he could do.”

Wheeler said: “That is when I realized this was not my first time seeing this man in the women’s locker room. About roughly four months earlier, I was again in the locker room, changing with a group of girls in our swimsuits. When I looked across the locker room, I saw what I thought was a very manly looking woman sitting on a chair in the corner, wearing a women’s swimsuit. Even though it seemed suspicious, I didn’t say anything and kept myself wrapped in my towel while changing. At this time, I had no reason to believe men were changing in the women’s locker room at the YMCA.”

In a May 10 meeting with the coach and Sowle, Wheeler said she was told by Sowle that YMCA officials “had been aware for a while” of transgender women members of the Y changing in the women’s locker room and that if Wheeler was upset, she could use the building’s private family changing areas.

Wheeler and another female teammate posted signs and notes in the women’s locker room later in May with messages that included: “Men are not welcome here!” “Biological Women Only!” “Make this a safe space for women” and “Is the YMCA moving farther from their values? Let your voice be heard!”

The swim coach and the Y branch manager told members of the girls team the next day that the signs “were considered hate speech, discriminatory and disrespectful,” Wheeler said. She said she and the teammate were sent home for the day when they admitted to putting up the signs.

Wheeler, who lives near Loami with her family, said she eventually was “removed from my swim team and banned from the YMCA.” Wheeler said in two Fox News interviews that she was kicked off the team, though her father said at the July 13 news conference that his family voluntarily withdrew their daughter from the team, and the family canceled its membership, all because of the incident.

“The fact of the matter is that they made it impossible for her to continue with the team,” said Dan Wheeler, 52, an Illinois Department of Natural Resources employee and Republican who serves as the part-time, elected Maxwell Township supervisor.

When Illinois Times tried to ask Abbigail Wheeler a question at the news conference, her father said he would answer questions on behalf of his daughter.

When reporters from Illinois Times and WCIA-TV asked what him made Abbigail feel threatened by a clothed transgender woman in the locker room, the crowd tried to shout down the journalists and yelled criticisms.

Dan Wheeler then said: “It’s not whether a biological male is naked, whether a biological male is leering, whether a biological male has a camera out. It’s the fact that there’s a biological male in the girl’s locker room.” The crowd then roared and clapped in support.

After the news conference, Dan Wheeler wouldn’t comment on how the YMCA would enforce the suggested ban on transgender women from women’s locker rooms. He wouldn’t answer when asked if genitals would have to be checked and whether medical and psychological exams would have to be conducted in case medicine or surgery had caused alterations in appearance.

“I told our story,” he said. “That’s where I will leave it, OK?”

YMCA director Sowle said Abbigail Wheeler and her teammate, who also later quit the team, were sent home initially because they violated Y policies against defacing property.

Sowle said the coach, who declined to be interviewed, told the girls’ team the posters contained “hateful speech” and not “hate speech.”

The coach immediately made an internal report about the two girls’ discomfort with a transgender member in the locker room, Sowle said.

She said there was no need for YMCA officials to notify members about transgender people using locker rooms associated with their gender identity.

“We’re not in a position, nor are we going to put ourselves in a position, to alert people in our membership base of somebody different from them using the facility,” she said.

State Rep. Chris Miller, R-Oakland, a Freedom Caucus member, said the YMCA incident “is a wake-up call for parents across our state as well as our nation. What kind of world will our girls inherit if the adults who are supposed to protect them are paralyzed by political correctness?”

Sowle said the Y follows all state guidelines for child-abuse prevention and checks its member database every night for the presence of registered sex offenders. All employees go through child-abuse prevention training and background checks, she said.

The controversy’s impact on the Y’s membership list, which numbers more than 20,000 people, has been “negligible,” Sowle said.

“We don’t have people left and right canceling memberships and pulling donations from our organization,” she said. “We have felt supported and encouraged to keep being who we are and taking care of the rights of every individual.”

However, she said the Y’s leadership team has received death threats, threats of violence and profanity-laced emails and voicemail messages. The messages have come mostly from people outside the area “who have been stirred up by the national media by versions of the story that have changed multiple times and are as false as they could be,” she said.

YMCA officials said in a statement they “find it disturbing that certain Illinois state legislators would use our YMCA building as a backdrop and demand that we violate the law.”

The officials said, “Any incidents of abuse or inappropriate behavior is documented and reported to authorities.” They added, “Behavior that is considered inappropriate in public spaces would be considered inappropriate in YMCA facilities, including individuals intentionally exposing genitalia to a minor.”

This article appears in Repurposing MacMurray Hall.