Our Founding Fathers would not have recognized today’s Supreme Court ruling, which upheld bans on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. After many pen strokes on parchment, what would later become the most powerful nation the world has ever seen laid its foundation on one word: liberty.
Liberty is the means to pursue happiness, and thus we were given the Declaration’s most famous phrase. But the Declaration doesn’t promise happiness; it protects its pursuit. Liberty never meant “I get whatever I want.” It has always meant “I am free until that freedom unjustly burdens or harms someone else.” Liberty must be balanced with responsibility. And that’s why today’s decision isn’t simply about sports. It’s about whether one person’s identity can override another’s rights.
The nation’s highest court didn’t create a new principle — it reaffirmed an old one. Rights often conflict. When they do, justice must prevail. Girls deserve equal opportunity, privacy, safety, and fair competition. And no one’s liberty can be protected by a society that refuses to acknowledge reality.
I’m not a founding father, but I am a girl dad. And every dad understands this instinctively. I don’t hate boys (I have two sons). I simply love my daughters. They deserve to compete fairly for scholarships and championships without having to share a bathroom with a boy. Liberty does not permit another child to take their opportunities. One of their classmate’s freedoms can’t erase their rights.
But there is another victim in this debate. The Left likes to claim that conservatives hate transgender individuals. I certainly don’t. I treat each one I meet with the same dignity I afford others. I believe many are suffering, and political slogans only fail them. You can despise an ideology without despising the person trapped inside it.
Where else in society do we not offer healing to those who are suffering? This is where “truth” gets in the way. We now hear phrases on debate stages such as “my truth” and “your truth.” But truth isn’t subjective. And truth is often framed as the opposition to compassion. But truth makes compassion possible. Without an honest diagnosis, there can never be real treatment.
We don’t buy the alcoholic a beer. We help him find a rehab facility. We don’t tell anorexic people to lose another twenty pounds. We help them shift their perception. A compassionate doctor doesn’t hide a diagnosis. He delivers the truth because that is the first step in the healing process. In every example, pursuing the former remedy results in greater suffering. The most compassionate thing we can do as Americans is help our neighbors reconcile with reality rather than conform to their suffering.
But it is the former approach that our media and corporations continue to employ. When ESPN reports that the Supreme Court “upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletics teams,” or that dozens of states “have adopted bans on female transgender athletes,” it is rejecting the compassionate truth. “Transgender girls” and “female transgender athletes” are boys. When one sees his identity confirmed by our most prominent institutions, it affirms “his truth.”
Instead of asking, “How do we help people become comfortable in the bodies God blessed them with?” these institutions ask, “How do we persuade everyone else to participate in the identity they’ve adopted?” Affirmation is never treatment.
This is where conservatives have a tremendous opportunity to not just be known as the defenders of truth but as the people most willing to help those living through this struggle. It is well known how the Left panders to groups like this (and others) to win votes. But winning someone’s identity isn’t the same as winning the person. And there are a lot of hurting people.
But, like everything, this transcends politics. The Supreme Court shouldn’t have to fix natural truths. In fact, it should never make it past the dinner table. It should never make it out of the Church walls. It should never make it to the school pickup line. Parents first, but pastors, teachers, and citizens alike can play a role in identifying, helping, responding, and intervening. It’s the compassionate thing to do.
I want my daughters to inherit an America where girls can be girls — fairly. I also want every young person struggling with their gender to get the appropriate help. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison gifted us a nation built on ordered liberty, not limitless self-definition. The challenge before us is not choosing between truth and compassion but refusing to surrender either in our pursuit of happiness.
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Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
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