Boston Globe Story on ADF-Backed Case Thumbs Scale Against Trans Youth

Coverage of a Christian school challenging non-discrimination law contains subtle attempts to skew the story against transgender girls’ participation in sports.

Opinion, by Evan Urquhart

In New England, the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom is staging an assault on state non-discrimination laws, alleging that they are in conflict with First Amendment protections on the free exercise of religion. The ADF is representing a tiny Christian private school that was sanctioned by Vermont’s athletic authorities last November for refusing to play against a team that included a transgender girl.

In coverage in the Boston Globe this morning, one side of the dispute had the benefit of a reporter seemingly tilting the scales towards their side, and it wasn’t the transgender girl who played girls basketball according to the rules. The story studiously avoids referring to the transgender player as a girl, instead describing her as “an imposing player” and, eventually, “a player [the Christian school] believed to be a boy,”

screenshot from the Boston Globe

By taking this approach to the gender of the player, reporter Kevin Cullen is signaling that the gender of trans people is open to debate. While this might appear at first to be a neutral, objective stance for a reporter on the story, if the gender of trans people is in the eye of the beholder this would tend to support the ADF’s side of the lawsuit, which is being brought on exactly that basis. By carefully not taking a side, Cullen has taken a side

Throughout the piece, Cullen seems to bend over backwards to present the ADF lawsuit in reasonable terms, referencing public opinion polling that states that transgender girls’ participation in girls sports is not supported by a majority of people in the US, something that has no apparent relevance to Vermont non-discrimination law. At one point, Cullen even goes as far as making a distorted and misleading reference to an instance over a year ago when a Vermont transgender girl was bullied by peers and forced out of the locker room.

screenshot from the Boston Globe

This is a reference to one of the first stories Assigned Media ever covered in depth, in which a transgender girl 14-year-old was bullied by a teammate and told to leave a locker room where she was allowed to be. The 14-year-old left immediately, but after it was clarified that she was allowed to be present in the locker room her bully complained to the right-wing press and spread lies about the other girl having behaved inappropriately. This resulted in a wave of threats targeting the trans student and the school in Randolph, VT. The town and fellow players rallied around the bullied child, but misleading accounts sourced to the right-wing press have continued to influence how the incident was perceived.

This is not the only Globe story that has seemed to take sides against trans girls in sports in recent days. On Monday another story largely adopted a right-wing frame by suggesting, without evidence, that cisgender girls are at higher risk of injury when they face transgender players. No evidence to that effect exists, but cherry-picked incidents of injuries that happen to involve a trans player have been used by the right-wing press, and now the Globe, to suggest that including trans girls in sports competitions is unsafe.