WASHINGTON (RNS) — Speaker Mike Johnson celebrated the House passage of a bill banning transgender students from girls’ sports on Tuesday (Jan. 14) by linking opposition to transgender rights with a passage from the biblical book of Genesis.
Johnson made the comments shortly after the House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act in a 218-206 vote, with all House Republicans and two Texas Democrats — Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar — voting in favor of the bill. The legislation bars transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports from elementary school through college.
“We know from Scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women, and men cannot become women,” Johnson said in a news conference immediately after the vote. He spoke while flanked by Rep. Greg Steube, who introduced the bill, as well as Riley Gaines, a former college athlete who is known for advocating against transgender women in sports. Gaines, who identifies as Christian, has credited a “spiritual awakening” with informing her activism and likened her work to fighting a “spiritual battle.”
Johnson said he was referring to a passage in Genesis, and when asked by RNS how he responded to different interpretations of that passage by Christians, including traditions that ordain openly transgender people, he said the Bible was “pretty clear.”
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