California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is generating blowback from both sides of the political aisle this week after he suggested that it’s “deeply unfair” to allow trans-identified males to participate in women’s sports.
Newsom invited conservative activist Charlie Kirk on the debut episode of his podcast titled “This is Gavin Newsom,” which aired Thursday. During their conversation, Newsom appeared to agree with Kirk’s point that allowing trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports is unfair to women.
While he stressed that the issue must be handled with “humility and a grace,” Newsom also suggested that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ inability to respond to pro-Trump campaign advertising on the issue hurt Democrats in the 2024 presidential election.
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In a statement published Thursday, California Assemblymember Chris Ward and state Sen. Caroline Menjivar of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus said they were “profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks.”
“All students deserve the academic and health benefits of sports activity, and until Donald Trump began obsessing about it, playing on a team consistent with one’s gender has not been a problem since the standard was passed in 2013,” the lawmakers asserted.
In a statement, Scott Wiener, an openly gay Democratic state senator from San Francisco, expressed his disappointment in Newsom, who he praised for having “many courageous moments over the decades supporting LGBTQ people, including helping turbo-charge the marriage equality movement.”
“He has taken significant political hits for doing so. I and so many will be forever grateful for that courage,” Weiner said in a statement. “This is not one of those moments. Charlie Kirk is a vile bigot, and standing with him on this issue is profoundly disturbing.”
Equality California, one of the state’s leading LGBT advocacy organizations, said in a statement that it is “disappointed and angered” by Newsom’s comments.
“Transgender kids — like all kids — deserve the chance to play sports alongside their teammates and learn important values like leadership, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Transgender young people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang said.
Renowned atheist evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a progressive who has expressed his own criticisms of gender ideology, called Newsom’s comments a “sensible change of mind.”
“Let’s hope the Democrat party in general will follow,” Dawkins wrote on X.
As recent polling suggests that most Democrats oppose allowing males in women’s sports, Christian conservative scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University hopes Newsom’s comments signal a shift in how the issue is discussed socially, calling the governor a “reliable weathervane.”
“Despite the Democrats’ recent vote in the U.S. Senate, the backdown begins,” he tweeted. “Now that Gavin Newsom has hoisted the white flag on men in women’s sports, maybe we can candidly and accurately describe the issue as … men in women’s sports.”
Some conservatives say they won’t be fooled by Newsom’s comments and point to his liberal political record as a rising star in the Democratic Party.
Rob Smith, a conservative activist who works as an influencer with Kirk’s grassroots advocacy organization Turning Point USA, published an X post Thursday stating that he doesn’t care if Newsom has “evolved” on the issue of “boys in girls sports.”
“He has a RECORD as a far-LEFT RADICAL!” Smith stated. He urged conservatives to “stop elevating these Marxists and allowing them to USE you to seem more ‘moderate.'”
“THEY ARE NOT!” he wrote in all caps.
In a video accompanying the X post, Smith suggested that Newsom’s apparent evolution on the issue comes too little too late because it comes “years after multiple girls in California, in the state that he runs, have lost opportunities to men.”
“He has pivoted on transgender athletes after so many young women have had to deal with boys in sports,” Smith contends.
“He hasn’t said anything about the transgender, basically biological men, that are in female spaces all across California,” Smith added. “He hasn’t said anything about the biological men that are in women’s domestic violence shelters. He hasn’t said anything about the biological men that are in women’s prisons that are sexually assaulting them in many numbers.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., took to X Thursday to declare that “If Newsom is serious, he should immediately issue an Executive Order to protect women’s sports and ask the Legislature to codify in law that men shall never compete in women’s sports in California again.”
Kiley suggested that “Otherwise, this is just posturing.”
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the conservative news outlet The Federalist, shared similar thoughts.
“Everyone was so excited about Gavin Newsom claiming to have changed his mind on protecting girls in sports but @briannalyman2 checked with his office and he’s not doing anything to help them,” she posted on X. “It was just words. ZERO actions to back them up.”
Smith concluded that Newsom’s comments mean “absolutely nothing” to him, saying his record shows “he didn’t care about biological men in women’s sports.”
“As soon as they say something based, they know they can run to conservative media and conservative media and conservative political commentators are going to launder their reputation,” Smith said. “We need to stop doing that. Gavin Newsom has an actual voting record, which is very far left. I don’t care that now he looks at the tea leaves and he says ‘Oh, well now it’s safe for me to say something that a lot of people have sacrificed a lot to say over the past five years.'”
Smith told conservatives to “stop letting these Democrats use you to launder their messaging to try to seem more relatable to conservatives or to try to seem more moderate and centrist.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
