There is an oft-used rhetorical device that I find both presumptuous and disingenuous. A speaker will insist, “This shouldn’t be political!” It’s easy to spot because it typically comes just after the speaker has said something controversial or, indeed, overtly political. It is used to front-run valid disagreement, by claiming opposition could only be motivated by bad faith “politics.”

So it is with the current debate over transgender policy and school sports.

It is presumed by Gov. Janet Mills, Attorney General Aaron Frey, Rep. Chellie Pingree and others to be self-evident that Maine’s current regime is the only option if one has any regard for justice, human rights, etc. Should anyone decline to agree with this startlingly fundamentalist conclusion, no hyperbole is spared. In addition to accusations of “making it political,” one is savaged as backward, hateful and trivially obsessed with denying other people’s right to “exist.”

Setting aside the fact that none of these sensitive souls seemed particularly concerned for the “human right” of playing sports when pools, gyms and fields were shuttered in 2020, Maine lawmakers have allowed their moral compass to be demagnetized in how this issue is framed.

Until recently, the terms of this policy debate were overwhelmingly controlled by those who demand blind faith in unknowable states-of-being and strict obedience to doctrine. It is rather those who dared to speak heresies and argue against the current practice who occupy a position that is properly secular. So, since we must separate church and state, it is time we describe Maine’s policy of allowing males to compete in female divisions of school sports accurately: religious extremism.

Consider a progressive utopia where inclusion and acceptance prevails. In this world, being born male and choosing to present as female is as mundane and unremarkable as changing your hairstyle.

A competition committee has been convened to lay down rules and make divisions for a new sport within Maine high schools. In weighing questions of fairness in this serenely accepting world, would the committee decline to distinguish between females and males who presented as female? Of course not. Why would they need to? Without the politically charged expectation to validate a student’s self-identification, such an idea would never occur to them. Since the distinction would have no partisan subtext or salience in such a world, neither officials nor competitors would hesitate to observe persistent, non-random physiological difference to assure fairness in competition.

So it is that when you remove “politics” from transgender policy and questions of fairness in sport, you move farther away from Maine’s current practice, not closer to it.

Although rare, continued participation by males within female divisions will eventually yield enough data points to show a clear and statistically significant bimodal distribution of outcomes, regardless of how fervently anyone claims mind over matter. Will extremists then screech even louder for you to deny the evidence of your own eyes in reverence to their faith?

Sadly, none of Maine’s recent changes in law are really about sports. Or kids. Those are merely foils for political actors to insist, “This isn’t political!”

Gia Drew, executive director of Equality Maine, condescendingly assures us, “… there are bigger concerns facing our world than teenagers running in a cross-country festival.” And yet Rachel McKinnon, a male-to-female world champion cyclist, was helpfully candid saying, “Trans inclusion is fairness. This is much bigger than sport, it’s a proxy for all of trans inclusion in society.” One moment it’s just a little race; the next, it’s a lever to transform human society. Perhaps they should work to get their story straight.

It is time reasonable, secular and sober-minded people simply say, “No.” It is taxonomically possible, intellectually honest and morally necessary for mature adults to recognize and make distinctions. Weight, age, district size and many other distinctions — generally valid and grounded in empirical observation — garner little controversy when applied to ensure fair competition. So it would be with gender, if girls’ sports had not been co-opted to incubate novel and expansive political objectives.

Maine girls deserve better than to be forced to carry Gov. Mills’ ideological crusade to term. Maine girls deserve political leaders who act as stewards of common sense and not religious fanatics. Maine girls deserve fair play.