OSHKOSH, Wis. (WFRV) – Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro joined U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde on the campaign trail Monday afternoon.
Local 5 News met Hovde and Shapiro during their stop at Wyldewood Baptist Church in Oshkosh.
“I’m here because this is one of the most important races in the country,” Shapiro said. “He (Hovde) must win, the Senate must remain in Republican hands.”
In Oshkosh, the two had a roundtable discussion about Title IX, a hot topic after the Oshkosh Area School District Board of Education recently adopted new Title IX rules
Local parents, students and school board members shared with Hovde and Shapiro how they believe schools allowing transgender students to use the restroom and play the sports of the gender they identify has negatively impacted other students.
“It makes boys equally uncomfortable, we have morals and values,” said one panelist who said she is a parent of children in a local school district. “The boys in that locker room were very uncomfortable with her (a transgender student) staring at them while they took off their clothes.”
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Other panelists noted that girls also feel uncomfortable when students who identify as girls but were born boys can change in the same locker rooms as them. Some also questioned the safety of allowing this to happen.
A 2018 study from the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute found that “including gender identity in nondiscrimination laws does not affect the number or frequency of criminal incidents in restrooms, locker rooms, and locker rooms.”
A study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that restrictive locker room or bathroom policies may be associated with a greater risk of a transgender student being assaulted.
Other panelists at Monday afternoon’s roundtable had other concerns about these gender-inclusive policies. Many said that other people they talk to who have the same opinions on these topics are afraid to speak out because they fear retaliation.
“This is really about prioritizing a minority (housing one transgender student) over the majority of people,” said one panelist.
Hovde echoed these sentiments in an interview he did with Local 5 News after the event.
“Of course there is protection for a transgender child, but that does not mean that their rights take precedence over all other children at school,” says Hovde. “The fact that you have one boy transitioning to a girl does not outweigh all the rights of all women.”
Hovde also brought up fairness when talking about allowing transgender boys to play in girls’ sports. He said his daughter was a standout athlete in high school, but her athletic career would have been dramatically affected if she competed against athletes who were born male.
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“It was great to see all the opportunities she had to compete in the sport and achieve the success she did,” Hovde said. “If she had had to compete with boys who robbed her of those opportunities, as a father I think that is fundamentally wrong.”
Hovde said public schools should be more concerned about teaching students about math, reading and writing than about gender-inclusive policies. The most recent data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction shows that nearly two-thirds of public school students are not meeting proficiency standards in English language arts (38.9 percent proficient) and math (37.4 percent proficient ).
According to 2022 Pew Research, 58 percent of all adults strongly support policies that require trans athletes to compete on teams that correspond to their gender assigned at birth (17 percent strongly oppose/oppose and 24 percent are indifferent). The survey also found that about 41 percent of adults strongly support or support a policy that requires transgender people to use public restrooms of the gender assigned to them at birth (31 percent oppose or strongly oppose it and 28 percent is indifferent).
A Gallup poll last year found that 69 percent of Americans believe children should only compete on teams that match their birth gender.
“I think there’s a lot of fear-mongering and a lot of assuming that there’s a problem, when it’s not documented anywhere that it’s happening,” said Morgan Gald, outreach chair for Hate Free Outagamie.
Gald said she and other members of Hate Free Outagamie were angry when they found out Shapiro and Hovde were campaigning in Northeast Wisconsin.
“This policy (which is not gender inclusive) creates an environment where the school feels unsafe, there is a new layer of discrimination, another layer where there is judgement,” she said.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin also weighed in on Hovde and Shapiro’s visit to Oshkosh, a spokesperson saying in a statement: “It’s no surprise that Eric Hovde is appearing with Ben Shapiro, an anti-abortion, right-wing podcaster who, like Eric Hovde , made insulting statements about millions of Wisconsin residents.”
“Are we going to take a minority few and bend the rules for them (at the expense of where the) vast majority of people stand? I don’t agree with that,” Hovde countered.
Hovde is running against incumbent Tammy Baldwin for one of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats.
“We strongly condemn the harmful rhetoric from Eric Hovde and Ben Shapiro during his campaign stop,” Hate Free Outagamie said in a statement to Local 5 News. “Their divisive language is intended to spread fear and discrimination against already vulnerable populations. Hate Free Outagamie stands firmly against any attempt to use fear mongering for political gain.”
“Gender-inclusive policies and protections against sexual misconduct go hand-in-hand to ensure that all students, regardless of gender identity, are treated with respect and feel safe,” the statement said.
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