Beth Stelzer isn’t a swimmer, she’s an newbie powerlifter.
However she’s been on the McAuley Aquatic Middle in Atlanta for the previous three days protesting controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas‘ presence on the NCAA swimming championships.
Thomas completed the 500-yard freestyle in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds Thursday night time to turn into the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I nationwide championship in any sport.
Stelzer, 37, has been joined in Atlanta by girls from everywhere in the nation who’re a part of Save Women’s Sports, a bunch she says fights for organic sex-based eligibility for feminine sports activities. The group is a part of a growing backlash towards transgender athletes like Thomas.
“This isn’t an anti-Lia marketing campaign,” Stelzer informed The Publish. “It’s a pro-woman marketing campaign. We expect everybody ought to play sports activities pretty.”
Stelzer stated whereas Save Girls’s Sports activities has members from everywhere in the political spectrum, she stated many have been former lifelong Democrats disillusioned by what she referred to as the “radical ideology” of the Democratic Get together.
Amy Sousa, who protested alongside Stelzer and others towards Thomas in Atlanta, told Fox News she is “a lifelong registered Democrat who in the end feels politically homeless” as a result of the Democratic Get together not “represents my beliefs or my views.”
“We got here down right here to help the feminine athletes,” Stelzer informed The Publish. “Our intention was to respectfully elevate consciousness whereas letting the women know they matter and that we are going to maintain the road for them.”
Stelzer shaped the group, she stated, after JayCee Cooper, a transgender woman, tried to hitch the 2019 USA Powerlifting Girls’s State Championship, which Stelzer was additionally competing in.
“I’m simply a mean American mother and I assumed it was a joke at first,” Stelzer stated.
“It threw me down a rabbit gap of what turned out to be the erasure of girls in sports activities.”
