Riley Gaines is a college student living in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a member of Turning Point USA, an organization dedicated to fighting for freedom on college campuses across the country. In this episode, we talk about her journey of coming out as transgender, her experience with the LGBTQ+ community, and what it means to live a life of freedom.
00:00:56.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:05.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:48.000We've done Freedom Night in America in Albuquerque.
00:01:51.000We now have an amazing community of local pastors that we meet with before these events where we are growing the movement to talk about the church taking a stand for biblical values, taking a stand against tyranny.
00:02:08.000I have a couple verses I want to share, but I'm going to just get right to the thing that's on my heart.
00:03:40.000It wasn't really something we talked about a lot.
00:03:43.000But as Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, things happen gradually and then suddenly.
00:03:49.000It's like we woke up in a different country.
00:03:52.000And one of the themes that we talk about here a lot is that you are living through a cultural revolution.
00:03:59.000The same that Mao did in China, where they're trying to actually refound the country.
00:04:05.000They look at themselves as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay, and George Washington.
00:04:11.000They're trying to refound the country into something new, something weird, something not ordinary, something different.
00:04:19.000And it's hard to always notice that when you're living through it, right?
00:04:22.000Sometimes you don't notice it because it's so confusing.
00:04:25.000And I'm sure some of you sometimes look at your TV and say, what country am I living in?
00:04:32.000Not, I mean, it's 600 years in federal prison for a former president, all of that.
00:04:37.000But the one issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law, and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God is the transgender thing happening in America right now.
00:04:52.000Now, some of you, and I was guilty of this for years.
00:04:58.000I used to believe in this live and let live thing.
00:05:01.000I had strong beliefs of what God's design was, but I said, hey, if it's not bothering me, then I'm not going to talk much about it.
00:05:08.000And I'm sure some of you probably said something similar to that.
00:05:36.000And if you can't participate, your kids must participate.
00:05:40.000And this used to be just kind of on the fringes.
00:05:42.000And, you know, those of us that do this for a living, we started to speak out more and more, especially three or four years ago.
00:05:47.000But I was told by the people in charge, oh, this is not, you know, it's just a little thing here, a little thing there.
00:05:53.000And the next thing you know, a story that shocked the world, those of us that pay attention, was all of a sudden when we saw a biological man win an NCAA championship in female athletics and swimming.
00:06:06.000And the people that told us that this was on the fringes, this was isolated, you see an institution destroyed in front of our very eyes.
00:06:14.000The very same people, by the way, that always are lecturing us about war on women, hashtag me too, were perfectly fine with a deranged neurotic man becoming an NCAA champion.
00:06:29.000We started to see this in schools, in curriculum, pronoun usage.
00:06:33.000And I do not exaggerate to say this is now the new state-run religion of the United States federal government, where they have two LGBTQ alphabet mafia flags at the White House, where they have trans people taking off their clothes, not an exaggeration on the White House lawn, where the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, comes out and says that biological men can give birth and lactate if they take the right drugs.
00:06:59.000In fact, the Biden regime says they're birthing people.
00:08:12.000We are in a church, and so it's important to remember: Deuteronomy 22:5, a woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak.
00:08:22.000For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
00:09:16.000I just want to start off by saying I might be the first woman to participate in this event, but is it just as easy as saying, identify as a man?
00:09:27.000Well, apparently, today you can identify for whatever you want to identify.
00:09:32.000I guess, Riley, my first question is: What is a woman?
00:10:14.000Here you are, University of Kentucky, ambitious young swimmer, minding your own business, wanting to be a national champion, and somehow now you've been thrust into one of the most consequential, high-stakes culture wars in American history.
00:10:28.000I'll take you back even further than that because I think it's important people understand the work that you put in your whole life to get to that point.
00:10:36.000I started swimming when I was four, and I graduated when I was 22.
00:10:39.000So this means I spent 18 years of my life.
00:10:44.000It's impossible to put into words the amount of time and the sacrifices and the dedication that it takes.
00:10:50.000In college, we were practicing six hours in the water every single day, swimming 10 miles every day.
00:10:56.000Three of those hours were before 8 a.m.
00:11:11.000Did your homework, you iced your shoulders, went to bed, did it all again the next day.
00:11:16.000And so, my college experience was nothing short of crazy, anyways.
00:11:21.000Freshman year, I had accomplished some pretty good things, but I was acclimating, adjusting, and so I knew I could do more my sophomore year.
00:11:41.000And about three days before we were supposed to leave, our coaches pull us out of the water and say, If you live in the dorm rooms, pack your stuff up.
00:12:16.000And I ended up finishing seventh in the country, which I was pretty proud of.
00:12:20.000You know, you're top eight, you're an all-American.
00:12:22.000But it was right then and there that I placed seventh that I knew my senior year, I wanted to become a national champion, which would, of course, mean becoming the fastest female in the country in my respective event.
00:12:34.000And so senior year starts up, and I'm right on pace to achieve that goal.
00:12:45.000About midway through my senior season, I'm ranked third in the country, trailing a few one-hundredths of a second behind the girl who's in second, who I knew very well, because like in most sports, you're top-tier athletes, you know of each other, regardless of where you're competing, because you've grown up competing against each other.
00:13:00.000And so I knew this girl in second very well.
00:13:03.000But this person who was leading the country was a name I had never heard of.
00:13:10.000And this is, of course, the first time I became aware of a swimmer named Leah Thomas.
00:13:14.000And so there was a lot of red flags at the time.
00:13:51.000I'm looking up this name on this database called USA Swimming, where if you were to look up Riley Gaines, you'd see my time progression from when I was eight years old.
00:13:59.000So I'm looking up this name, Leah Thomas.
00:14:04.000And I continued to head scratch until an article came out disclosing that Leah Thomas was formerly Will Thomas and swam three years on the men's team at University of Pennsylvania before deciding to switch to the women's team.
00:14:18.000And when I read this, I remember, of course, I felt so shocked, but really I felt a sense of relief because I then went to look up who Will Thomas was on that same database.
00:14:30.000And I saw that this was a mediocre man at best, ranking 462nd the year prior when competing against the men.
00:14:39.000But that's really why I say I felt relieved because I thought the NCAA would see it, how I saw it, and how my parents saw it, and my teammates and my coaches, and how anyone with any amount of brain activity would probably comprehend this.
00:14:59.000You're clapping too soon because the NCAA did not see it that way.
00:15:03.000They saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.
00:15:04.000And so they announced that Thomas's swimming with the women was a non-negotiable.
00:15:10.000That first day of competition, I watched on the side of the pool as Thomas swam to a national title.
00:15:19.000These are Olympians Thomas was beating.
00:15:22.000These are American record holders, the most impressive female swimmers this world has ever seen, again by body lengths, which is significant in swimming.
00:15:46.000And almost impossibly enough, we had tied, meaning we went the exact same time down to the hundredth of a second, which is pretty rare when you're racing for a minute and 40 seconds and not even one 100th separated us, which shows me that God has his hand on this.
00:16:21.000But what really thrusted me over the edge, after we raced, we went behind the awards podium where typically you're handed your little $5 production trophy and you stand on the podium and you're named an all-American.
00:18:05.000And again, that's what really pushed me over the edge.
00:18:07.000When they reduced everything that we, and when I say we, I mean every girl on that pool deck.
00:18:14.000Everything that we had worked our entire lives for, they reduced that down to a photo op to validate the feelings and the identity of a male at the expense of our own.
00:18:24.000Not to mention the locker room, not to mention the silencing and all the other different factors that went into this.
00:18:30.000That's when I knew that I really, up until this point, truthfully, I cowered.
00:19:01.000This realization that if we as women, really we as female athletes, if we weren't willing to stick up for ourselves, how could we expect someone else to stick up for us?
00:19:11.000We're standing on this podium applauding and smiling and we want some hero to step in and save us.
00:20:17.000That was never an arrangement that we knew about.
00:20:20.000The only time we became aware that we would be undressing inches away from a six-foot-four man who's fully intact with an exposing male genitalia was when we were inches away from a six-foot-four man who was fully intact with an exposing male genitalia.
00:20:39.000And if we had to see it, you guys at least have to hear about it.
00:20:46.000Again, it was just feelings of, first of all, let me set the scene of a swimming locker room because it's not a place of modesty.
00:20:55.000These suits that you put on, your racing suit, it's skin-tied.
00:20:59.000It takes about 15 minutes at least to put these suits on.
00:21:02.00015 minutes of poking and prodding and tucking.
00:21:06.000I probably shouldn't say tucking, not the target kind of tucking.
00:21:11.000I mean, like your nail beds are bleeding by the end of this, right?
00:21:48.000But I think the best way to describe this without even being overdramatic is that it was traumatizing.
00:21:56.000And not even really just traumatizing necessarily because of what we had to see.
00:22:00.000But for me personally, it was traumatizing to know just how easy it was for these people and these authority figures to totally dismiss our rights to privacy.
00:22:12.000And so I immediately left the locker room and went up to one of the officials on the pool deck and I said, you know, look, I know the guidelines that allowed Thomas at the meet, which was a mere 12 months of HRT, which is hormone replacement therapy, which there's no amount of HRT that would make a man and woman comparable, but I can promise you 12 months is nothing.
00:22:36.000I know the guidelines for the meet, but what are the guidelines that allowed a man into our locker room?
00:22:41.000And so nonchalantly, this official looks at me and says, oh, well, we actually got around this by making the locker rooms unisex.
00:22:49.000And the first thing that came to my mind, okay, unisex, you realize by admitting you change the rules, you're admitting Thomas isn't a woman, right?
00:23:07.000So any man, any coach, any parent, any official, any pervert who wanted to would have had full access to our changing area and bare minimum, we weren't even told about it.
00:23:23.000And there's one more part about this meet that naturally the media has done a really terrible job of covering.
00:23:30.000At the same meet where we had Thomas, who is of course a male identifying as a woman, we had another trans athlete who's a female identifying as a man.
00:23:42.000We were told we had to use he him pronouns referring to this individual.
00:23:46.000Formerly Izzy, now goes by the name of Isaac, swam only in a speedo.
00:23:52.000So imagine this: it's the finals of the 100 freestyle.
00:23:56.000You have a woman in a speedo and a man with a bulge in a women's swimsuit racing next to each other.
00:24:06.000You guys are laughing, but that's literally what we saw.
00:24:08.000I mean, it was like the Twilight Zone.
00:24:11.000And so Izzy now goes by the name of Isaac, ended up finishing fifth in the country in the 100 freestyle, which again is a huge honor.
00:24:19.000But if we were really basing this off gender identity, why was Izzy now Isaac competing with the women?
00:24:53.000I thought these were supposed to be places of higher education.
00:24:58.000The one meet I watched of hers this year, the only male swimmer she beat was a male swimmer with one arm.
00:25:06.000And I don't even say that to be funny.
00:25:09.000I say that to perfectly highlight what's at jeopardy and who is at stake here.
00:25:17.000So Riley, you were traumatized by the pervert, and I had you on the show, and we made a lot of headlines, Riley Gaines, and I, because I had her on the podcast.
00:26:14.000We're talking about the University of Kentucky, University of Pennsylvania, the NCAA.
00:26:19.000We're talking about political figures.
00:26:21.000What I'm getting at, Riley, is this was basically a conspiracy of silence.
00:26:26.000We were failed by so many, making us the collateral damage in the process.
00:26:33.000And yeah, make no mistake, it's not just women's sports.
00:26:36.000It's academia, it's corporate America, it is the churches.
00:26:40.000There are so many institutions and places where we're seeing these cultural issues just grab us by the throat, which is a pretty chilling thought, to be totally honest, which I know it's kind of grim to say that.
00:27:42.000When Thomas's teammates sent an email to their administration, 16 of them, plus their parents, signed on to this email expressing their discomfort in the locker room, their university responded back with, and I swear I have a screenshot of it.
00:27:57.000If you feel uncomfortable seeing male genitalia, here are some counseling resources that you need to seek.
00:28:04.000They were forced every week to go to mandatory LGBTQ education meetings to learn about how just by being cisgender, they were oppressing Leah Thomas.
00:28:13.000They told us that if we did speak out and any harm whatsoever came toward Thomas's way, whether that's physical, mental, emotional, through social media, whatever that harm looked like, then we were solely responsible.
00:28:29.000And we would be responsible for a potential death, making you a murderer.
00:28:35.000You don't want to have blood on your hands.
00:28:38.000So I suggest you be quiet and listen to those who know what's best.
00:28:46.000But make no mistake, again, it's not just the athletes who are silence, it's the coaches.
00:28:52.000It's the parents who work these corporate jobs who are terrified of defending their own daughters because they feel threatened that they might potentially lose their job.
00:29:03.000These coaches, I was nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year after this, which is the most prestigious honor.
00:29:15.000It's the most prestigious honor for collegiate female athletes because it encompasses more than just your athletic achievement.
00:29:22.000Where I had accomplished incredible things.
00:30:13.000And so at the University of Kentucky, we had the number one WNBA draft pick and Abby Steiner, who's breaking world records in track and field, and a national championship volleyball team and a national championship rifle team.
00:30:26.000And so I was so humbled by this until a full list of NCAA women of the year was released.
00:30:36.000And it was not exclusive to just women because Leah Thomas was the University of Pennsylvania's nominee.
00:30:42.000And so when I found this out, first of all, the award was totally devalued and meaningless to me.
00:30:49.000I didn't even want the stupid thing anymore.
00:30:50.000But the NCAA was having a big conference where they were going to announce their winner.
00:30:55.000So I thought, what better place to put myself in front of these people than here?
00:31:01.000I had tried sending letter after letter and email after email, no response.
00:31:06.000So I figured I'll go there and I'll hand to hand them a legal demand letter expressing that if they don't stop discriminating on the basis of sex, there will be legal action, which let me inform you they haven't.
00:31:18.000Just yesterday, in cycling in the NCAA, there was a man who won this honor, stole this honor.
00:31:30.000I handed them a legal demand letter, but they also had this big convention hall where all the athletic directors would walk around and companies and organizations could buy a booth.
00:32:46.000You see, we really can't have lawsuits.
00:32:49.000You know, I'm the breadwinner for my family, and I really can't risk losing my job and very quickly turn and alleviate themselves from the situation entirely.
00:32:57.000Even the president of the NCAA, who publicly released a statement in the days following that national championships, and I remember it word for word because it's so funny.
00:33:09.000He says, I unequivocally stand in my decision to allow Leah Thomas to swim with the women because it's based in evolving science.
00:34:47.000They're mentally disturbed people, and we give them these unbelievably powerful pharmacological compounds, which, by the way, they go on to shoot up schools like in Nashville or attempt to shoot them up in Colorado.
00:34:57.000By the way, where's the trans manifesto in Nashville of the shooter that killed a bunch of young Christian kids?
00:35:41.000Number one, talk about how this is your story, the accusation or the criticism that some of these people would say, oh, that's bad, but it's just isolated.
00:35:49.000But, Riley, weightlifting in Canada, track championships in Connecticut.
00:35:54.000I hope, and Riley will do a much better job than I am riffing.
00:35:57.000This is widespread in sports of all ages, all different athletics, Riley Gaines.
00:36:04.000To believe the narrative that it's a non-issue and that it's not happening, just as you mentioned in your opening, that's how we got here, is because we believed that for too long.
00:36:16.000That could not be further from the truth.
00:36:19.000It's happening in every sport, every state, every level, every division.
00:36:23.000And I know this because I get the messages.
00:36:27.000I get the messages from the young girls who are dealing with this.
00:36:38.000I get the messages from the parents who literally will call me crying watching their daughters get obliterated in their sport, knowing their daughter is being exploited in a locker room.
00:36:48.000I get the calls from the coaches who don't know what to do, who don't know how to defend their athletes.
00:36:56.000I get them all the time, daily, daily.
00:37:00.000And it would break your all's heart if you read these messages, just like it does mine, which is why I feel so passionately about fighting for this.
00:37:09.000Because again, I see what's at stake if we don't.
00:37:13.000For too long, we've been kept in the dark, and for too long, we didn't have someone to defend us, to really act as a megaphone for us.
00:37:23.000I could list a hundred examples, seriously, off the top of my head right now.
00:37:37.000And to believe the lie that I see all the time, I travel state to state, and I testify on behalf of these fairness and women's sports bills being put forward.
00:39:30.000This is one of the biggest issues happening in America.
00:39:33.000Riley, we'll do questions in a second here.
00:39:35.000Talk about your faith, how important it is for you.
00:39:38.000And what I want you all to understand: three years ago, Riley Gaines was a college student and was an NCAA athlete.
00:39:46.000And now she's been thrust into the culture war.
00:39:49.000Many of you say, Charlie, I'm just this, I'm just that.
00:39:53.000If you pursue excellence, you have no idea what God has in store for you for a fight for righteousness and goodness.
00:39:59.000Talk about your faith, Riley, and we'll do some questions.
00:40:02.000I'm very fortunate to have had a strong family foundation, which I think is a very important piece to this: having two parents who love each other, who have stayed together.
00:40:13.000I have an amazing three siblings, all my grandparents.
00:40:17.000I'm very fortunate to have a very strong family foundation.
00:40:19.000That being said, my parents raised me in the church.
00:40:23.000So I grew up with a spiritual foundation.
00:40:26.000But I will tell you, this past year, I have been spiritually awakened.
00:40:33.000I have seen just so clearly how God works and how he moves and how he has his hand on me.
00:40:40.000But just as clearly, just as clearly, I have seen how his opposition works and how he moves and how he deceives and how he manipulates and how he lies.
00:41:36.000Anything else, that's not compassionate to lie, to affirm someone's delusions.
00:41:43.000In the past, would we ever tell an anorexic person who believes they're fat, that they're actually fat?
00:41:49.000Would we tell someone with schizophrenia that these voices they hear talking to them, would we tell them that those voices are real and that they're there?
00:43:55.000In fact, we have joined with our state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horn, to fight and defend the Save Women Sports Act in Arizona.
00:44:20.000And so just like you did, we're trying to do that.
00:44:23.000But my question is, when we go and talk to people, so often it's women who are the ones fighting against us to defend women.
00:44:32.000And our message has always been, just like you said, that you can't have compassion without reality.
00:44:39.000And so how do we, if this law gets overturned or if we lose this court case and these boys who are, they're saying, are prepubescent or they've been on, you know, gender hormones, that they're okay to compete against girls, as if hormones are the only difference between men and women that, if that happens, what do we do to say, how do we instruct women to fight?
00:45:05.000Do we tell them to just keep their girls off the teams?
00:45:09.000I think it's a really important and interesting point.
00:45:12.000How you bring up it, it tends to be women fighting women.
00:45:16.000Don't even get me started on Megan Rapino or the stupid press secretary or any of these women who claim to to really pride themselves on advocating and fighting for women, yet they're the ones.
00:45:28.000But I think that speaks to our innate differences.
00:45:32.000Women tend to be more agreeable, we tend to be more emotionally involved, we tend to be more apologetic, which only furthers our point that men and women are different.
00:45:43.000But I think it's important to to continue, of course, raising awareness, because now more than ever and we're seeing this happen where we saw it with BUD Light, we've seen it with Target people, now more than ever, are looking for alternatives.
00:45:58.000They're looking for ways to show that enough is enough without publicly being outspoken, because I understand not everyone can, can take, do what we do stand on the stage and for other reasons other than just feeling, you know, like they don't want to be ostracized some people don't.
00:46:17.000It's, it's nerve-wracking to be on the stage in different things, but people, now more than ever, are looking for alternatives, and so I think, continuing to spread awareness for the longest time I didn't think a boycott was the way forward.
00:46:30.000I thought, you know, no, we shouldn't have to compromise.
00:46:33.000But I'll tell you when my perspective on that changed.
00:46:37.000When this bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and it fell entirely on party lines, meaning 219 Republicans voted in favor of protecting women's sports and 203 Democrats voted in opposition of protecting women's sports.
00:46:55.000And that's when I realized, okay, it's not legislation that's going to make this change.
00:46:59.000Or if it is, it's going to be, it's going to involve too many girls getting exploited in locker rooms or hurt or missing out on opportunities before change is really made.
00:48:32.000And so when someone ceases to act on a same-sex attraction, which some people have and some people don't, we should, of course, welcome them with open arms.
00:48:41.000And there's rejoicing in heaven when anybody repents.
00:48:44.000In fact, repentance is one of the most beautiful things a believer can do.
00:48:48.000In fact, we should celebrate that and we should say your sins are completely and totally forgiven.
00:48:53.000But I just want to re-emphasize this, is that your identity is not in your sexual attraction.
00:48:59.000Your identity is in who is your savior.
00:49:02.000That is your identity in Christ alone.
00:49:10.000Okay, I just want to pray to God, the Holy Spirit, and Lord Jesus to give me the right words to say.
00:49:15.000Okay, so people ask me all the time, what's my pronoun?
00:49:18.000You know, like, do I think I was born the wrong gender?
00:49:21.000And no, you know, I was born a female, like you said earlier.
00:49:23.000There's no amount of pills, no amount of surgeries that I could take that's going to make me a man at the end of the day.
00:49:30.000Now, as far as, you know, who I love, and that's just people, like all people.
00:49:34.000I don't know if you guys have watched the service from about four weeks ago.
00:49:37.000What did Jesus say about transgenderism?
00:49:40.000But if anybody didn't, I highly, highly suggest you go back and watch that beautiful service.
00:49:47.000So I don't think this has anything to do with like equality.
00:49:50.000I feel like something behind the scenes has to do with just further discord in America.
00:49:54.000And if you agree with that or what, because I think all of America could see, you know, you're the winner, you know, like there's like bar none.
00:50:02.000And as a solution, do you think maybe there'd be a women's, a men's, and then that community, you know, have their own?
00:50:11.000Because, you know, there needs to be a solution to every problem instead of just talking about the problem.
00:50:16.000So if that would be a good suggestion, maybe.
00:50:19.000I have some strong thoughts for you at first.
00:50:22.000This one is interesting because If we create a third category, it's really just another place for men to win.
00:50:31.000It will be a male who identifies as a woman beating out the females who identify as men.
00:50:39.000And I also think, again, with this whole thing, and we've seen it, we've seen it progress.
00:50:46.000I think, especially since COVID, we came back and a lot of things were really different.
00:50:51.000And what I realized is if you give an inch, they take a mile.
00:50:55.000We have never in our history needed to do that.
00:51:40.000So, Mr. Thomas, William Thomas, could have had a delusion in his head that he's a woman while competing against other men and finishing 462nd.
00:51:50.000Instead, we had to reconfigure all of our systems.
00:51:55.000So, Riley with XX chromosomes had to compete against Delusional Freak with XY chromosomes.
00:52:58.000But we're not going to have you go create more chaos and confusion and be a thief against women that competed their whole lives to become NCAA champions.
00:53:13.000Hey, Riley, I'm a swimming official for NC2A Meets.
00:53:19.000And this year we've been asked to kind of overlook or not comment on the gender issue with a little bit of a hint that we may not be asked to officiate if we do or do something at the meet.
00:53:34.000That being said, there's a new rule that just came out that I was reading about this year about swimsuits at NC2A meets.
00:53:42.000The rule basically states that an athlete swimming in an event should wear the swimsuit that is for that event, suggesting, of course, that a male identifying as a female would have to wear a female suit, and then a female identifying as a male would have to wear a male suit.
00:54:04.000I don't know if you're familiar with that new rule, but I'd like to hear your comment.
00:54:10.000Well, at least they're fully going into it.
00:54:13.000If they're going to believe it, I mean, they're going all the way.
00:54:17.000But I'll tell you, this meet, this Leah Thomas thing happened at Georgia Tech.
00:54:23.000I had the host rep of Georgia Tech at the meet send me a screenshot of what the NCAA had messaged them prior to allowing them to host the meet.
00:54:33.000They said, you're not allowed to speak out in opposition of this meet being here.
00:54:37.000And if you do, there will be consequences.
00:54:51.000You know, the only rule the NCAA came up with after the tie between Thomas and I was now they have a rule of what to do during a tie and they give the trophy to whoever is older.
00:55:04.000That's how they saved their own butts.
00:55:06.000That's how they justified their actions because Thomas is in fact older than me.
00:56:46.000But just as the average citizen like myself, aside from being involved in school board meetings, which I am, and being involved politically, I've befriended elected officials and so forth.
00:56:55.000What suggestions do you have just in everyday life for us to come to defense in this type of situation?
00:58:04.000And it's incredibly interesting because you can see this cycle play out throughout history.
00:58:09.000I think the last time we had a society full of strong men was in the 1940s during World War II.
00:58:15.000I saw this tweet the other day that said in the 1940s we had men lying about their age so they could enlist in the draft and now we have men lying about their sex so they can get into women's sports, which I just thought was pretty funny and pretty telling.
00:58:30.000And it shows how that cycle remains true.
00:58:33.000And so be willing to defend your daughters and teach your sons masculinity.
00:58:38.000And I appreciate the work you do and being involved in the way that you are.
00:58:40.000I think everyone needs to get more involved.
00:58:44.000Yeah, and I would just add, one of the great tactics that I think we as conservatives have underutilized is civil disobedience.
01:01:58.000So basically, I've been a swimmer for the past seven years, and this is my senior year.
01:02:03.000And I've also decided to take up the role of leading FCA, which is Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
01:02:09.000And so for those past seven years, we've always had it on campus.
01:02:12.000But last year, the school decided that we're not allowed to have it on campus and we need to have it outside because other students of other religions, they wanted to have their own study of their religious texts.
01:02:25.000And I just wanted to ask you, what words of advice or tips do you think I can do to help the school have us back beyond campus?
01:02:36.000It always seems to be an attack on Christianity, which is, again, if we're looking at the breakdown of faith, if we're looking at the different pieces of this, like the silencing, the denying of truth, the changing of the language, it really is Marxism.
01:02:53.000In terms of what to do, I think it's important to garner support.
01:03:59.000One of my favorite stories, and we helped pour gasoline on it, was young Jaden in Colorado with the don't tread on me flag and his mom at the wherewithal to film that meeting goes viral and the whole school backs off.
01:04:15.000Sometimes it's a little bit of exposure, a little bit of sunlight, a little bit of pressure, and these institutions can break.
01:04:21.000And so I would hold the line and I would call them out and find the hypocrisy and don't give in.
01:04:34.000I've worked in the mental health field for years and I'm seeing what has been contained into that spill over into trying to be societal norms.
01:04:52.000But also, I was wondering, has anyone thought of legislating for mandatory blood tests for hormonal levels to match the norm of the gender that you're competing against?
01:05:07.000You know, so that like say Leah Thomas, his testosterone level should have been checked, you know, because that's unfair.
01:05:23.000So that's like what the IOC has implemented, which is the International Olympic Committee.
01:05:28.000I believe their level is five nanomoles per liter of testosterone to compete in the opposite sex.
01:05:36.000That's not computable still to a woman's testosterone level.
01:05:40.000Men on average have 20 times more testosterone.
01:05:44.000So asking them to get to the average woman's level, which is anywhere from 0.8 to 2.5 or so.
01:05:51.000So around one nanomole per liter, that would be incredibly dangerous for a man first and foremost.
01:05:59.000Secondly, there are differences outside of just testosterone level that contribute to success, especially in something that requires athleticism or sheer strength, like lung capacity, like the obvious things such as height and limb size and foot size, your heart size.
01:06:17.000Those things aren't changing even with testosterone suppression.
01:06:21.000So I don't believe that regulating hormone levels and only hormone levels is a way to make competition fair.
01:06:30.000And also bone density, muscle mass, in addition.
01:06:33.000I will just say this, just you said something that I wanted to make sure I mentioned earlier.
01:08:16.000I will say, when I was in the situation that I was in competing against Thomas, I tried talking with the other girls, asking them, what happens if we wouldn't race?
01:09:14.000I'm not saying that's a good thing, but you're trying to, if I was in high school and there was like, for example, a 35-year-old NFL player going up against, we wouldn't put up with it.
01:09:22.000We would yell so loud, we would get so intense, we would rally the troops, we would boycott, and it's just men or women are different.
01:09:29.000Women are more agreeable, and women right now are just being bulldozed by men, which was always the argument of feminism, which is hilarious.
01:09:37.000We don't want to be dominated by men, so let's be dominated by men.
01:09:43.000Ms. Gaines, what has been the best part of being courageous?
01:09:48.000I have gotten to meet so many amazing people.
01:09:52.000And being in environments like tonight and looking out and seeing so many people who are really ready to take action, you might think I'm here inspiring you guys, but it's this that inspires me.
01:10:05.000I have gotten to meet so many amazing people, go to so many amazing places, and really make impact, which is what I knew when I began to speak out.
01:10:17.000Whether that's traveling state to state, whether that's testifying in front of Congress or the Senate or whatever that looks like, these different policy changes I've been involved in.
01:10:29.000I have been involved in disc golf policy changes.
01:10:33.000I know nothing about disc golf, yet here I am advocating for these women.
01:10:38.000So it's kind of just this empowering feeling.
01:10:42.000And myself, I have a younger sister who's a phenomenal athlete.
01:10:51.000And being just married myself and hoping one day that I get to be fortunate enough to have a daughter of my own, I can imagine being in the position that I'm in, really seeing what we saw, experiencing what we did, and not fighting for her.
01:11:08.000It's just, it's things like this that I know that's a pretty cliche answer, but truthfully, it revitalizes me and helps me further go on, if that makes sense.
01:11:20.000I want to make sure I mention before we get to the next question, there was a recent piece in news that goes to show this is deeper than sports to that other question.
01:11:29.000So there is one institution that has banned men who think they are women and women who think they are men from crossing over.
01:11:38.000And it's not basketball, it's not football.
01:11:40.000It's the International Chess Association.
01:11:46.000Now, I did a whole hour of radio on this.
01:11:51.000And the media did not like what I had to say.
01:11:54.000Now, you would think, why would men be better at chess than women?
01:11:59.000Now, some people say, oh, Charlie, are you trying to say they're smarter?
01:12:10.000Men are better at macro, military strategy, planning, offensive coordinating of football.
01:12:17.000You sit down at a party, and if I don't know if I'm sitting next to a man or a woman, if they start talking about politics, the stock market, or macro events, it's a man.
01:12:28.000If they're talking about their kids, the sicknesses in the neighborhood, it's a woman.
01:12:40.000This is why you'll see a man with untied shoes talking about how we have to save us from some sort of existential evil.
01:12:47.000By the way, we need both the macro and the micro.
01:12:49.000But the chess thing is so interesting because the International Chess Foundation says we cannot allow men who think they are women to compete in women categories.
01:13:18.000So my question is, about a year ago, I decided that I wanted to go into education because I felt that there weren't a lot of educators who truly love children and wanted to see them thrive in California.
01:13:29.000About a year ago, I ended up calling the state board of California to see what the requirements were for K through A education.
01:13:35.000And right now, the state is mandating that for kindergartners, so five, four, five, possibly six-year-olds, they are teaching gender studies in the state of California.
01:13:45.000My predominantly Republican county is having a really hard time fighting this.
01:13:51.000School boards are pushing back, but they can only push back so far.
01:13:55.000I ended up leaving California to move here because I decided I wouldn't teach gender studies in school.
01:14:01.000School is not a place to teach about gender.
01:14:04.000So I believe that there are plenty, plenty of good Californian educators that really do want to see kids thrive and want to see them grow and don't want to be teaching gender studies.
01:14:15.000So my question is: how would you encourage the people in California, the educators in California who are standing up for all the right things to continue doing that?
01:14:25.000This is why they're all moving to my home of Nashville, Tennessee.
01:14:30.000But seriously, it goes back to the same thing.
01:14:34.000You have to create a coalition of these educators who know this is nonsense.
01:14:39.000And it's hard to create that coalition because, again, I was in that same boat.
01:14:45.000And it's hard to get everyone on the same page.
01:14:47.000It's hard to have these conversations, but you're exactly right.
01:14:50.000There are more people than just yourself who know this is wrong and goes against their moral compass.
01:14:55.000But creating this coalition and the same premise of holding the line, saying we won't teach this, or what happens if we don't teach this.
01:15:59.000And I feel like that often gets lost in the mix of all of this.
01:16:02.000But my mindset to training was to develop a sense of consistency, which I actually think is really applicable to life outside of even training.
01:16:13.000Come in every day and be consistent, whether that's in your diet, whether that's in your sleep schedule, whether that's in your studies, your training, your weightlifting, whatever that looks like.
01:16:23.000I think consistency is the most important thing.
01:16:26.000And that's something I really tried to develop myself.
01:16:29.000And I actually felt like my junior and senior year, once I had kind of acclimated to the training and all of the lifting of the weights and stuff, which was new to me upon getting to college, I'd finally develop that sense of consistency, even among my attitude.
01:16:45.000Every day I came in with an attitude of I'm here for two and a half hours, three hours.
01:16:50.000While I'm here, I'm going to give it everything I have.
01:16:53.000And when I leave, I'm not going to think about it, whether it was good or bad.
01:16:56.000And so consistency to me is the most important thing.
01:17:00.000And again, that transcends far beyond just athletics.
01:17:15.000So I'm going to end it off with his proffers from Proverbs 31 to 8.
01:17:20.000Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and for the rights who are district.
01:17:24.000So recently, I'm part of the men's Bible study group from my church from Highlands.
01:17:30.000And we just recently just got back through tender word from Santa Sweber, which actually kind of reading from the book, which has literally been a year ago, like, and now I'm kind of seeing all this stuff happening in all the corporate world, which kind of speaking of which, I just started to get back for the whole legislative thing in the legal world.
01:17:47.000I just got back from the training video.
01:17:48.000Was a transgender person in the whole video, and I was like, Is this the direction where this country is going?
01:17:54.000Like, affecting with our own churches, which I think that's kind of against everything where we're going for and corporate things.
01:18:01.000So, this is as someone who is also a blog writer and actually do a very devout Christian.
01:18:06.000What could we do as Christians how we can actually speak up against those who actually go against everything with the Bible's doing for?
01:18:14.000Well, lucky for us, we have a beautiful handbook of what to do when this is when these issues, again, these cultural issues are happening.
01:19:52.000As I mentioned, my heart just feels kind of overjoyed with gratitude and different things being here, seeing so many people who are really ready to do something, to get involved, to be proactive.
01:20:08.000Because again, for too long, I think we've been reactive rather than proactive.
01:20:13.000And seeing you all, it just kind of fills my cup.
01:20:18.000And I'll say, Senator Hawley, he's amazing.
01:20:20.000He was on a couple of the Senate judiciary hearings I was on.
01:20:38.000And he's, well, Riley, now what do you know about this whole thing?
01:20:44.000And I had this human rights campaign president sitting next to me.
01:20:48.000And she looks at him and she says, Well, Serena can beat men in tennis.
01:20:54.000Serena Williams can beat men in tennis.
01:20:56.000And so that's when Senator Kennedy looks at me and he's like, Well, Riley, what do you know?
01:21:00.000And it's like, Serena and Venus Williams lost to the 203rd ranked male player in a blowout while he was smoking and drinking in between sets.