‘Chess is different from weightlifting’: Another Dem presidential hopeful cracks on trans sports issue

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary and potential Democrat presidential candidate in 2028 Pete Buttigieg has tempered his support for so-called transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.

As Fox News reported, during an interview with NPR, Buttigieg acknowledged “fairness issues” in the debate.

“Around sports, … I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports,” Buttigieg said.

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, admitted that parents of girl athletes who raise concern about males competing against their daughters have a reasonable argument, but he says he doesn’t believe the issue should be regulated from Washington, D.C.

“I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians … in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn,” Buttigieg said.

“Chess is different from weightlifting, and weightlifting is different from volleyball and middle school is different from the Olympics. So, that’s exactly why I think that we shouldn’t be grandstanding on this as politicians. We should be empowering communities and organizations and schools to make the right decisions.”

However, as Fox News points out, Mayor Pete’s former boss, President Joe Biden, passed an executive order on his first day in office in 2021 that said, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”

Also, Democrats in Congress tried to pass the Transgender Bill of Rights and the Equality Act, both of which would have allowed trans athletes to compete in girls and women’s sports.

Buttigieg joins several other prominent Democrats and pundits who have spoken out against allowing males to compete with females, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom; Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.; and HBO host Bill Maher.