Ashamed Nation

Sport Definitely Not The Winner On the Day

Transgender NZ Weightlifter Wins Two Gold Medals in Women’s Division




Warner Todd Huston
Breitbart News


A transgender weightlifter has swept the women’s categories in the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa, winning two gold medals over natural-born female opponents.  Laurel Hubbard has once again crushed natural-born female opponents winning two gold medals and a silver in three heavyweight categories for women at the games, according to the Washington Times.

Hubbard defeated Samoa’s Feagaiga Stowers, who won the gold last year when Hubbard pulled out due to an injury.

Born as Gavin Hubbard, the 41-year-old weightlifter has cut a wide swath through female weightlifting after transitioning as a transgender woman six years ago. The only hiccup in Hubbard’s domination of the sport was an elbow injury during last year’s Commonwealth Games.

Hubbard’s continued gains in the Pacific region may have served to spur the leading U.S. weightlifting association to ban men transitioning to females from competing against natural-born women.

This year, USA Powerlifting delegates voted 46 to 4 to keep a previous policy banning transgender participation amid pressure from well-funded transgender athletes to reverse the ban.

Artificial Humanoid Rights

The Sham of Modern Sport

Imagine a world somewhere in a galaxy far, far away where a female humanoid had smashed every competitor in a sport called tennis.  She was growing bored and wanted a fresh challenge.  She started to eye up the male humanoid inter-galactic competition where the prize money was way, way beyond what she had hitherto been able to claim.

So, as one would expect, she took a few drugs and, true to expectations, she began to hit all her male opponents out of the court--literally.  When the humanoids on planet Earth heard about it, they twitted and tweeted for days about the injustice of it all.  Silly people.  Eventually the intergalactic sports regulating body told planet Earth to shut up, take their drugs, and play ball.  The prodigious daughter of  one Venus Williams was only too happy to oblige.  Things had changed considerably from her mother's day.

Now, let's return to reality.  This, from The Guardian:

Sport Was the Winner on the Day

"Bel Bows Down;  Nebo is Stooping" [Isaiah 46:1]

For more decades than we can count sport has been a religion throughout the West.  Secularists are devoted.  It is not just entertaining.  Sport has become the meaning of life itself to millions upon millions of people.

Secularists are also devoted to celebrating beliefs and actions which break up the Christian family.  No fault divorce has destroyed the significance of marriage as being the very centre of  human society.  Now, in a perverse marriage made in the pit, secularism has embarked on a campaign to destroy both sport and human relationships.  As the theologians point out, evil always integrates into the void.  It destroys itself.

A biological male who identifies as a transgender woman won a women’s world championship cycling event on Sunday.  Rachel McKinnon, a professor at the College of Charleston, won the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles.

McKinnon, representing Canada, bested Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen of the Netherlands and American cyclist Jennifer Wagner to take home the gold.  McKinnon celebrated the victory on Twitter, writing: “First transgender woman world champion…ever.”

Allowing biological males who identify as transgender women to compete in women’s athletic events has been a controversial subject, as critics have argued that it puts the female competitors at an inherent disadvantage.

McKinnon in January was quoted in USA Today arguing against requiring biological males to suppress testosterone as a requirement for competing against women.   “We cannot have a woman legally recognized as a trans woman in society, and not be recognized that way in sports,” McKinnon told USA Today.

Less Hypocrisy And More Consistency, Please

They Doth Protest Too Much

We have been impressed with the way Aussie rugby player, Israel Folau has dealt with the chattering classes over the past week or so.  He is facing heat for daring to profess his faith in Jesus Christ and his submission to the Scriptures.  The chattering classes are going nuts.

"This is not about money or bargaining power or contracts. It's about what I believe in and never compromising that, because my faith is far more important to me than my career and always will be. "After the meeting I went home, turned on the TV and was really disappointed with some of the things that were said in the press conference.

"I felt Raelene (Castle) misrepresented my position and my comments, and did so to appease other people, which is an issue I need to discuss with her and others at Rugby Australia.  "That aside, I hope Raelene (Castle) and Andrew (Hore) [Australian Rugby bosses] appreciate my position, even if it differs with theirs. . . .

Folau, who is off contract at the end of this year, reinforced his belief that homosexuals were destined for hell based on Biblical text.  "I was asked a question by somebody about what God's plan is for gay people," Folau wrote.  "My response to the question is what I believe God's plan is for all sinners, according to my understanding of my Bible teachings, specifically 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10: 

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor the drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

"I do not know the person who asked the question, but that didn't matter. I believed he was looking for guidance and I answered him honestly and from the heart. I know a lot of people will find that difficult to understand, but I believe the Bible is the truth and sometimes the truth can be difficult to hear."   [NZ Herald]

It's a bit precious of all those who are aghast and agog that they don't also stand up to defend the rights of the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, the greedy, the drunkards, the revilers, and the swindlers.  Why single out homosexuals as worthy of their defence?  The reality is that the revilers who are condemning Folau loudly disbelieve the Bible.  Period.  Therefore their anger and resentment is entirely gratuitous--manufactured, if you will.

Since they do not believe in the existence of God Himself, they do not believe in Hell either.

Time and Tide Waits For No Athlete

An Open Letter of Concession

Dear Vlad,

We have had our differences over the years, but from time to time there are matters and issues upon which we can find agreement.  One of those is doping in sports.  Now, to be candid, it is true that I have hitherto supported the general line that drugsenhanced sports performance is a form of cheating.

Therefore, in the interests of full disclosure, I must acknowledge that to this point I have strongly opposed Russia's widespread doping and chemical enhancement of its athletes.  Yes, I have supported the Olympic bans upon Russian athletes.  I have even gone so far as to agree with the banning of Maria Sharapova from world tennis. 

But, I have changed my views.  It seems now that doping is widespread throughout world sport and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.  Mankind's lust for glory on the sporting fields is just too strong, too overwhelming to withstand.  Human pride is one of the strongest traits of character in our fallen and benighted race.  Therefore, it is time to throw the towel in.

This is an issue in which history will record Russia, under your leadership, as being a truly enlightened nation, way ahead of the morally antiquated West.  You saw clearly, whereas we did not.  You perceived the arc of history more presciently than any other world leader, apart from minnows like North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  Credit, where credit is due, as my old dad used to say.

As you know, transgenderism, or gender-bending, is rife in the West.

Hypocrisy on Steroids--Literally

Celebrated Drugs Cheating

Transgenderism is a deliberate attempt to rebel against the Creator.  There is a basic polarity in creation when it comes to human beings: their gender is determined by the sex chromosomes that combine (one from the female; one from the male).

Females have an XX pair of sex chromosomes, and males, an XY pair. A baby’s gender is determined by the sperm cell that fertilizes a woman’s egg. Sperm carry one sex chromosome, either a Y (male) or X (female). [Gender Baby]

Transgenderism would subordinate this natural law to the demands and requirements of human choice.  If a man wants to be a woman, or a woman wants to be a man this change can be manipulated into existence by drugs.  This is an ultimate expression of human self-determination. Now it has become all the rage.  And the biggest fools in this biggest of fool's paradises are sports people.

In recent decades there have been huge ructions, demands, postulations, and storms of anger over some athletes and sports people enhancing their performance by drugs.  They have been labelled as cheats and treated as pariahs.  Why the entire Olympic team of Russia has recently been suspended from competition because of their regime of chemical additives.  That's on the one hand.

Drug Cheating in Sport Is a Human Right

The Sound of Rats Being Swallowed

A couple of really interesting articles appeared in Stuff the other day.  The first had to do with the new intellectual fad sweeping the Western world: gender identity!  The idea here is that no-one has a right to tell anyone else what their gender is.  One's gender is determined by how one thinks of oneself.  It's a self-identification thing, and oneself is the ultimate and final determiner of one's reality.  Naturally, the autonomy of identity has been claimed as an inviolable human right.

In this particular case New Zealand has a man whose gender self-identity is female.  So--genetically male, but self-identified as female.  Same old, same old inanities.  But this chap is a weightlifter and has been competing as a male, but now that he has "transitioned" he has been selected for our national female weightlifting team and will likely represent New Zealand in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games.

The selection of a transgender woman for the New Zealand weightlifting team is understood to be a first for New Zealand sport.  Laurel Hubbard will represent her country in the 90kg+ women's category at this month's Australian international weightlifting event and is in line for selection for the NZ team for next year's Commonwealth Games.  [Stuff]

Whoopee.  What a wunnerful world.  The president of Olympic Weightlifting New Zealand, Garry Marshall believes the rules give them no choice.  There are only two genders recognised in the rules: male and female.  No category called transgender.

Marshall went on to comment on the "advantages" Hubbard will enjoy in this charade:

Marshall said he believed Hubbard had "huge advantages" over her rivals.  "She competed for a long time as a man and her efforts were very strong. That strength has remained with her despite reduced testosterone.  

When the charade finally plays out and Hubbard gets his gold medal in the female weightlifting competition everyone amongst the Chatterers will clap and cheer, saying "Wunnerful.  Sport was the winner on the day."

Bad Taste

Failure Can Be the Better Outcome

Some things leave a long-lingering sour taste in the mouth.  Taste is variable, and not not everyone's senses react similarly.  As the  old saying has it, one man's meat is another man's poison.  So, we do not expect that our fastidious dislike of  New Zealand pouring out cash to support  America's Cup challenges and defences will be shared by everyone.

To be clear, we do not find it noisome when some large, successful corporates throw in millions upon millions of dollars to support campaigns or defences of this Rich Man's Sport.  A corporate will make commercial decisions about the cost-benefits of advertising and brand exposure.  Ultimately they will decide whether the benefits justify the costs.  Eventually corporates will face the scrutiny not only of their respective boards of directors, but also, ultimately, their shareholders.

Two items hit the news yesterday.  Firstly, the New Zealand America's Cup syndicate leader returned home to announce that time was running short and that unless substantial multi-million dollops of the green stuff were contributed in short order, Team New Zealand would be skewered.

Letter From America (About Lance Armstrong)

Drastic Action

The adage "where there is smoke, there's fire" elevates suspicion to certain fact.  When the adage is applied to evidence in a legal dispute there can be problems.  Here is Patterico, whose day job is a District Attorney in LA, writing on the Lance Armstrong case:

Lance Armstrong Stripped of 7 Tour de France Titles 

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:42 am

. . . . Having never followed this story before, I was surprised when I received the news alert last night about it. I was vaguely aware there were allegations, but didn’t know there was any danger of such a drastic sanction.

For Cricket Fans . . .

And Others Who Appreciate Skill (or Chance)

This YouTube vid is engaging--not just because of the skill on display, but also the interaction between Swann and Murali. Enjoy.



Hat Tip: Whaleoil.

Pro-Choice is Anything But

Tebow, the Super Bowl and Hypocrisy Exposed

The following piece has been written by Sally Jenkins, a pro-choice, pro-abortion feminist, who is a staff writer for the Washington Post. However, she has been offended by the outpouring of criticism against CBS for accepting a Focus on the Family ad during the upcoming Super Bowl which celebrates life, the family, and implicit Christian beliefs. (We wish we could write as well as Jenkins.)

Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labelled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

A Modern Tawdry Nationalism

Elite Sport and Dirty Money

There are few things more unsavoury than a rapacious government boasting about how, after having pillaged its citizens, it then wasted the “loot”. We have been subjected to this odious spectacle in recent days, with the government bragging about blowing $60 million (that's right, $60 million!) on supporting sports for the Olympic Games.

We were treated to the disgusting spectacle of a Minister of the Crown, Clayton Cosgrove boasting about how New Zealand had won the biggest swag of medals since how long—a demonstration that the government's “investment” in elite sports people was “paying off”. The ethics of this are craven. The ideology which drives it is both morally bankrupt and insidiously wrong.

The ethical monstrosity is made plain by asking a simple question: Why would you tax citizens to fund and promote elite sports people? We can understand taxing citizens to ensure that the nation's courts are effectively protected from being frequented by weapon-carrying thugs. We can approve taxing citizens in order to build and maintain a strong well-equipped, well-trained National Guard for national defence. For these tasks—justice and defence—are part of the proper and very necessary role of government. But taxing already overburdened citizens to fund elite sports people? There is nothing proper about it.

Let's review some of the reasons put forward to justify this criminal waste.

Other nations do it, so we need to do it, if we are going to keep up. In this regard we have probably been more provoked by the Australian example than any other. But it begs an obvious question: why would we try to keep up? If Australia or any other nation wants to burden its people, on the one hand, and squander its resources on the other, wasting them on elite sports facilities, why would we care? If Australia ended up winning every medal on offer in every sport in the Olympic Games, and shouted "Oi, Oi, Oi" all the way to Timbuktoo, why would that concern us? Would it somehow damage our lives? Would it threaten our national sovereignty? Would it improve our education system? Would it make our society less just? Would it properly restitute victims of crime? If Australians are that stupid—let them do it. To imitate idiocy is to maximise stupidity.

We need to win medals to maintain our national pride. As soon as the argument is uttered, its folly is immediately obvious. Misusing and wasting the taxes of citizens to promote elite sports people is not a matter of national pride—but immense folly. It is a reason for shame. We find no pride in medals won off the back of the tax payer. Further, why would a government concern itself with national pride? This is just jingoistic nationalistic imperialistic bombast. In the nineteenth century the European powers of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and England used exactly the same reasoning based substantially on nationalistic pride to engage in a race to conquer imperiously or control vast swathes of the globe. Imperialism was utterly bankrupt then. The modern form of nationalistic pride—winning sports medals—is equally bankrupt now, but to add insult to injury, it is also trivial, yet very, very costly.

Success in sports provides a good role model for our youth. Whoa! Get this. Have you ever seen a longer bow? Children in primary schools are taking P. How are we going to deal with that? Well, we will fund Olympic athletes. That will fix it. How stupid! How asinine! Oh, you think the bow is not that long? That there is a causal connection between the two? Well, here's a cheap alternative: let's put posters of elite sports people up in every class room. Would hardly cost a cent. Let's have Michael Phelps up there. Tiger Woods. After all, one young lad recently won the US Amateur Championship, beating Woods's record of being the youngest. Danny Lee says all his life he has been inspired by Tiger Woods.

One of the things that grates most is that Olympic athletes are elite sports people. If they are successful they are richly rewarded—financially. Good on them. But to use the tax payer to fund them to ensure their success is unjust and immoral. But let us also be mindful that there is an army of advisers, support people, consultants, trainers, dietitians, career sports bureaucrats, and other hangers-on who are also all dependant upon the largesse of the government. They will push and shove and lobby and argue to keep the gravy train rolling. Leeches, all.

To every elite or aspiring sports person we need to give a clear and unequivocal message—the people of New Zealand do not owe you success. They don't owe you anything. If they choose voluntarily to support you, good on them, and you. But to take one cent of tax payer's money is to take dirty money. And if that means we cannot compete successfully in a world arena—so be it. Noting of substance is lost. Principled honour is maintained.

To the government, we say, “Get your thieving fingers out of the pockets of the people.” Get rid of all non-core government duties, your vanities, your fripperies, and reduce taxes—for everyone. If you do that, the poor will get the biggest marginal benefit. Take a principled stand for the poor and disadvantaged, instead of bleeding them every fortnight to pay for your schemes of empty vanity and self-serving hubris.