Trans athletes face intense efforts to sideline them. These California teens are resisting

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At a recent meeting of California’s high school sports governing board, two seniors from Arroyo Grande High School spoke out against a transgender peer competing on their track and field team and allegedly “watching” them in the girls’ locker room.One of the Central Coast students said she is “more comfortable” changing in her car now.The other cited a Bible verse about God creating men and women separately, and accused the California Interscholastic Federation of subjecting girls to “exploitative and intrusive behavior that is disguised through transgender ideology.”“Our privacy is being compromised and our sports are being taken over,” she said.During the same meeting, Trevor Norcross, the father of 17-year-old transgender junior Lily Norcross, offered a starkly different perspective.“Bathrooms and locker rooms are the most dangerous place for trans students, and when they are at their most vulnerable,” he said.

“Our daughter goes to extreme lengths to avoid them.Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t.”Norcross said Lily’s teammates had for months been misrepresenting a single moment from the year prior, when Lily had to use the restroom after a full day of avoiding it, chose to use the one in the locker room because it is monitored by an adult and safer for her than others, and briefly stopped to chat with a friend on her way out.“There’s always more to the story,” he said.The conflicting testimony reflected an increasingly charged debate over transgender athletes participating in youth sports nationwide.

Churches, anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, cisgender athletes and their conservative families are organizing to topple trans-inclusive policies, while liberal state officials, queer advocacy groups, transgender kids and their families are trying to preserve policies that allow transgender kids to compete.The battle has been particularly pitched ...