There are moments when a culture tells on itself. The California high school track controversy involving AB Hernandez is one of those moments. Hernandez, a transgender athlete from Jurupa Valley High School, reportedly finished first in three girls' jumping events at a California postseason meet and qualified for the state meet. CIF then used a policy that allowed additional female athletes to share podium recognition or advance when a transgender athlete placed ahead of them. In other words, the system tried to have it both ways: allow a biological male athlete to compete in the girls' division, then create a workaround so the girls who lost still received symbolic recognition. That is not fairness. That is institutional confusion dressed up as compassion.

The most insulting part is not the podium. It is the message. The message to girls is simple: your category is negotiable. Your opportunities are conditional. Your bodies, your training and your sacrifices can be overridden by an adult ideology that decided sex no longer matters when it becomes politically inconvenient. That is absurd. Girls' sports exist because biological sex matters in athletics. Muscle mass, bone density, explosive power, lung capacity and male puberty are not social constructs. They are not campaign slogans. They are not bigotry. They are biology. The people pretending otherwise are not being kind. They are asking girls to pay the price for a theory they did not create.

Girls' Sports Are Not a Social Experiment

The entire purpose of separate girls' and women's sports is fairness. Nobody would seriously argue that boys and girls should be forced into one athletic category across every sport at every level. We separate them because male physical development creates measurable advantages in speed, strength, jumping and power-based events. Track and field makes this obvious. A long jump is not a feelings contest. A high jump does not care about identity. The tape measure is brutally honest. So is the stopwatch.

If the girls' division can be opened based on gender identity instead of biological sex, then the girls' division is no longer a protected category. It becomes a political accommodation zone. Girls are still expected to show up, train hard and accept that fairness now comes with an asterisk.

The NCAA Already Saw the Writing on the Wall

This is not a fringe concern. In 2025, after President Trump signed an executive order aimed at keeping biological males out of girls' and women's sports, the NCAA changed its transgender participation policy. The NCAA announced that the women's category would be limited to student-athletes assigned female at birth, while the men's category would remain open to all eligible athletes. That policy shift matters because even major athletic institutions understand the basic problem: if women's sports are going to remain meaningful, the women's category has to be based on sex.

This should not be complicated. There can be respect for every person's dignity without pretending that biology disappears in competition. There can be compassion without erasing fairness. The adult world keeps trying to frame this as inclusion versus hate. That is dishonest. The real issue is fairness versus ideology.

Children Are Not Ready for This Burden

The sports issue connects to a larger problem: adults have placed children at the center of a political, medical and cultural experiment they are not mature enough to fully understand. Children should not be pushed into permanent or life-altering gender decisions before adulthood. Minors cannot vote. They cannot buy alcohol. They cannot sign most contracts. They cannot legally consent to many adult decisions because our society recognizes that childhood and adolescence are developmental stages. Yet on one of the most psychologically complicated and biologically significant issues imaginable, we are told children possess total clarity. That does not hold up.

A child struggling with identity deserves care. But care should not mean rushing that child toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgeries before adulthood. The burden should be caution. The standard should be protection. At 18, a person can make adult choices. Before that, society has every right to say: not yet.

DEI and the Constitutional Problem

This controversy is part of a broader problem in American institutions: identity politics replacing equal treatment. DEI began with a marketable label — diversity, equity and inclusion. In practice, many DEI programs have become ideological sorting systems. They divide people into groups, assign moral status based on identity and pressure institutions to make decisions not on merit or equal rules, but on political categories. The Constitution does not promise equal outcomes. It promises equal protection. When public schools, state athletic associations, universities or government agencies elevate identity categories over equal treatment, they invite constitutional conflict.

Trump's January 2025 executive orders targeting federal DEI programs were a necessary step. "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing" directed the termination of federal DEI programs. "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity" took aim at federal contractor requirements and preference-based systems. But federal action is only one front. Bad ideas do not disappear because Washington changes direction. They move sideways into state law, school policy, corporate compliance departments and athletic rulebooks. That is why this fight is not over.

This Is Not About Hating Anyone

The predictable response to this argument is accusation. Bigot. Hater. Transphobe. Extremist. That is the lazy script. Protecting girls' sports is not hatred. Protecting children from irreversible decisions before adulthood is not hatred. Opposing government identity preferences is not hatred. Wanting objective standards in public institutions is not hatred. The word "hate" has become a tool used to shut down arguments people cannot answer.

A society can show dignity to transgender individuals without dismantling female athletic categories. A society can offer counseling and support to struggling children without greenlighting medical transition before adulthood. A society can treat people equally without building DEI bureaucracies that rank citizens by identity. Those are not contradictions. They are boundaries. And boundaries are what serious societies use when emotion, politics and ideology start overrunning common sense.

The Cruelty Is Aimed at Girls Too

The left talks often about compassion, but its compassion is selective. Where is the compassion for the girl who trained for years and lost her podium spot? Where is the compassion for the girl who misses a state meet? Where is the compassion for the female athlete who knows that speaking honestly could get her branded hateful by the adults who are supposed to protect her?

Girls are being asked to swallow the absurdity and call it progress. They are expected to accept that their sports category can be opened, their concerns can be dismissed and their objections can be pathologized. If they complain, they are told to be kind. If they object, they are told they are dangerous. If they state the obvious, they are told biology is bigotry. That is not compassion. That is coercion. Most of these girls are minors. They are not activists. They are not political operatives. They are kids trying to compete in the category created for them. Adults created this mess. Adults should fix it.

A Better Rule Is Simple

At every level of competitive sports, female categories should be reserved for biological females. The male or open category can be open to anyone who qualifies. No one is being banned from sports. The question is category, and that distinction matters. A male-bodied athlete competing in the girls' division is not merely participating. He is entering a protected category that exists because sex-based differences matter. Once those differences are ignored, the category loses its purpose.

My Bottom Line

The California track controversy is not a small story. It is a warning flare. When a biological male athlete can win multiple girls' events, qualify for the state meet and trigger a special podium-sharing policy to soften the obvious unfairness, the system is not working. It is performing. It is trying to preserve the appearance of fairness after abandoning the principle.

Girls deserve better. Children deserve better. The Constitution deserves better. America does not need more identity politics. It needs equal rules, honest language and adults willing to say no when ideology demands the impossible. The girls' division should mean girls. Childhood should not be treated as a medical identity laboratory. Government should not use DEI, woke language or political fashion to sort citizens into favored and disfavored groups.

We made the categories for a reason. Now we need the courage to defend them.

Why This Matters

Culture is built in small concessions. One rewritten sports rule. One school policy. One DEI office. One coerced silence. One parent afraid to speak. One girl told to accept unfairness because adults decided biology is impolite. That is how institutions drift from common sense into madness. The answer is not cruelty. The answer is clarity. Protect girls' sports. Protect children. Protect equal treatment. Protect reality. Because once reality becomes negotiable, fairness is the first thing to go.