In late August, I reported that 20 MLB teams were promoting or actively funding groups that either promote or directly perform medical sex changes for minors:
Under the auspices of LGBT-themed “Pride Nights” — fundraisers and charity partnerships that began in the early 2000s and were embraced, over the course of two decades, by almost every team in the league — many of MLB’s most prominent franchises have begun to promote or fund groups that encourage or provide sex-change procedures and gender-transition hormone treatment for minors as young as 12. Other organizations promote “social transitions” — i.e., nonmedical changes in “gender expression,” including the adoption of new names, pronouns, and clothing — for children as young as three…According to National Review’s analysis, of the 29 teams that held a “Pride Night” event this summer (Outsports reports that every team did except for the Texas Rangers), at least 20 have promoted or funded groups that advocate or are directly involved in child gender transitions. At least six of those teams promoted or funded organizations that lobby against restrictions on youth sex-change surgeries and for policies such as “gender-affirming” curricula for elementary-school children and “trans-inclusive” K–12 sports. Five other team Pride Nights promoted or funded groups that provide resources for, and often actively encourage, youth sex changes. Four promoted or funded groups that write referrals for or partner with clinics that perform medical gender transitions — either via hormone-altering drugs, sex-change surgeries, or both — on minors. And finally, five teams have promoted or funded clinics that do drug-induced or surgical youth gender transitions themselves.
Yesterday, Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) wrote a letter to the Tampa Bay Rays — one of the teams that was directly funding a medical clinic that provides sex-change drugs to minors — raising concerns about what I had reported about the franchise’s practices. Rubio wrote:
Major League Baseball (MLB) is woven into America’s cultural identity. Ted Williams joined the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II in the prime of his career. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch in Game 3 of the 2001 World Series. Baseball isn’t just a game, it is an American institution that transcends politics, religion, race, and geography.
It is for this reason I was alarmed to learn that the Tampa Bay Rays donated $20,000 to Metro Inclusive Health (MIH) in the Tampa region. The National Review recently reported that MIH provides services to individuals who identify as transgender, “such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), reproductive care, and specialist referrals.” As reported, these services are not exclusively provided to adults – MIH is also in the business of “prescribing gender-transition hormones for minors.”
Rubio went on to outline how “there is almost no safety data associated with the use of these so-called treatments,” as well as the fact that “the impact of these so-called treatments in young teens is irreversible.” “For whatever good MIH may do in providing care and mental counseling for vulnerable populations in Tampa Bay, it is engaged in extremely harmful and irreversible practices not backed by science,” he wrote. “The Rays Baseball Foundation’s goal of ‘improving the lives of those in need within our community, focusing primarily on education, youth development, wellness and social responsibility’ is a noble one. Yet, the donation made to MIH indicates a lack of awareness about the nature of the organization’s activities and the long-term damage it can have on the very people your foundation and MIH claim to serve.”
Read the full letter here.