Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines was reportedly assaulted during an attempt to speak at San Francisco State University. The attack followed another successful effort to shout down a speaker with opposing views on a campus. Gaines was rushed from the event and kept in a secure room for nearly three hours, according to her account on Twitter.
The former University of Kentucky (and All-American) swimmer was at the university to discuss her views on why women sports should be reserved to those who are biologically women. She believes that the effort to allow transgender athletes to compete is destroying the progress made in female sports since the start of Title IX. Like the author J.K. Rowling, Gaines has found herself under constant threat and attacked as a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF).
On Twitter, Gaines objected that “[t]he prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU…I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder.”
She videotaped herself being rushed by police officers to a safe location. Her husband, Louis Barker, is quoted as saying:
“She told me she was hit multiple times by a guy in a dress. I was shaking. It made me that mad. It makes me sick to feel so helpless about it. She was under police protection and was still hit by a man wearing a dress.”
The incident is all too familiar today. These activists have every right to protest. These are issues that go to the core identity of people on both sides. However, protesters do not have a right to disrupt a class or speech.
What is notable about this incident is that it appears that the shout down occurred just outside of the room. We have seen this tactic before. Indeed, at George Washington, I once debated law professor John Yoo, who is one of the authors of the controversial “torture memos” during the Bush Administration. We had disrupters opposed to Yoo in the debate who were removed. However, we had a large number of protesters who shouted down Yoo from just outside of the room and made it difficult for many to hear him. To its credit, the law school went outside and asked the protesters to move away from the windows and give some distance from the event. It was done without incident and the event continued.
That was clearly not done here. The university has to guarantee the safety of speakers as well as their ability to be heard. The protesters should not have been allowed to shout down the speaker from the hallway outside of the room in my view.
The Golden Gate Xpress, the school’s student-run newspaper, showed videotapes of how the protest grew in size and eventually became so large that the police removed Gaines for her own protection. A speaker should never have to fear for her physical safety in discussing contemporary issues on a campus.
There is no indication of an arrest in the case, which is also curious. If Gaines was struck, it occurred while she was being escorted by officers.
As for the successful canceling of the event, there remains the question of how the university will respond and whether it will hold any groups or individuals responsible for the disruption of this event. Equally important is the university addressing questions over its own actions before the cancelling of this event.
As someone who played basketball in college I’m not opposed to what Riley Gaines has to say. And it’s not right if she faced physical threat in her attempts to say it. Athletes at higher levels are forever trying to get an advantage, it’s built into the drive it takes to be really good at a sport. To me this is a PED issue and should be legislatively. dealt with as such…
But this is not the free speech issue of the day to hang your hat on Turley. The book banning in Florida is a much worthier example of a true threat to free speech. Even more pressing, what just occurred to the young legislators in Tennessee last night…, a truly despicable attempt by the right to silence free speech. Jim Crow level, which is of course what the age of Trumpism has fanned and made excessively worse in recent years. Don’t trust me? Check the data on racially and religiously motivated attacks in recent years in the U.S.
We’re at a tough moment nationally. I’ve always believed Trumpism is the logical extension of Nixon’s Southern Strategy (which of course touches into the real roots of rage on the right, the barely contained anger at not having the legal right to lynch people anymore and the legal efforts to return to that time). This is the sentiment you play to far too often on your blog here, Turley.
Bull crap. No books have been banned. You can still go to a library to get your porn. They just took it out of elementary schools where they should not be showing how to give a BJ.
Do you even hear yourself?
ATS is insulting another blog member.
The truth is that ATS wants an Anne Frank book in an elementary school library despite the fact that it is a rewrite of the book that makes Anne Frank into a lesbian.
It is the left that censors and we see that on a daily basis. ATS is a liar and a trickster. He should be condemned.
What is happening in Florida is not about free speech, those who crave prurient reading material can get it anywhere, it is about protecting minors from issues that should be left for parental control. If you can’t comprehend the difference then I would say that you are part of the problem. This is not an issue about free speech it is about the over reach of bureaucrats and government agenda-driven unions into the personal space of private citizens and their rights. You have had your brain coopted by the koolaid.
The problem is censorship and book banning, and your inability to see it through the need to find a justification for actions running against the Constitution.
And that’s even letting the sheer absurdity of the fact the right is concerned with banning books while students are shot on a frighteningly regular basis in schools whether there is gun presence to prevent it or not.
But hey, I could carry your logic forward and say why ban CRT literature when all a young student has to do to see it in action is look what happened in Tennessee last night.
Name a book that has been banned in Florida. This does not include books having been taken out of elementary school libraries. For example, if Playboy Magazine isn’t allowed in elementary schools, that does not mean Playboy Magazine has been “banned in Florida.” So . . . what book has been banned in Florida?
No doubt a full list, but something for you to chew on nonetheless.
https://pen.org/these-books-are-banned-in-martin-county-florida/
Who is to blame for censorship and book banning? Mostly the left. The left is into grooming. Is this anonymous into grooming?
@Anon
All of those books are still available for purchase. Every single one. You are a silly, silly person, a good little fascist, and your definition of ‘banning’ is very intentionally misleading – we know that you know it as well as anyone. Last time I checked it was blue folks throwing Harry Potter onto a literal pyre.
The modern left would be hilarious beyond parody if the consequences weren’t so actually dire; you aren’t convincing anyone. Not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow.
1. Lynching was never a legal right. Democrats lynched thousands of black Americans and some white Republicans. Democrat lynchings were always an unlawful, abhorrent, extrajudicial execution. I have long believed the hateful rhetoric your party continuously spews was always intended to provoke a mentally ill progressive into assassinating Trump. Your party’s rhetoric succeeded in provoking a progressive into trying to assassinate a baseball field full of Republicans.
2. Books are not being banned. As far as I know, the restrictions about what can be published have not changed much. You don’t like it that government in some states are responding to voters and removing certain books from libraries and curricula in government schools. You lie and pretend that is a “ban.” Provided the publisher wants to publish those books it is free to do so. Book sellers are free to sell the books. You are free to buy them.
Whether lynching was written into law or not doesn’t speak to the fact there were no legal repercussions for doing it. There were ‘accepted’ lynchings in Kentucky well into the 50’s.
Pulling existing books from libraries equals banning books, no matter the anti democratic rhetoric used to justify it. If you really were concerned with protecting children you’d be outraged it’s so easy to kill them in school settings.
Also, I find it hilarious no one has questioned my claim that what animates the right is a rage they can’t lynch people anymore but instead fall back on the obfuscation of leaving out the fact the ‘right’ of old were actually in the Democratic party.
Pulling existing books from libraries equals banning books
Congrats, you get the award for silliest statement this year.
Thousands of books are published each year, and libraries are continually updating their collections. If they didn’t, all you’d see at libraries would be 100-year-old books. My library even got rid of a whole section of books to make room for DVDs, books on CD, and so forth. None of the pulled books are banned in my state.
The Shock troops of the Trans Movement. Men in dresses. They are not women, they are not trans women. They are men who say they are women, some even take female level hormones but they are still men.
Society’s response to these “trans persons” is not the cause of their suicides. This was a problem for people with Gender Dysphoria Disorder long before it was even known to the public. They have high suicide rates because this is a MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER. A typical response to mental health disorders is suicide. Anorexia and Bulemia have a high suicide rate if they gain weight too fast and their mental health has not been improved enough for them to cope with the change in their body image. Major depression’s main morbidity is suicide. Bipolar disorder has a high morbidity characterized by suicide. (Suicide during severe exacerbation of their depression, sometimes suicide when the manic phase overwhelms them). Schizophrenics have higher suicide levels. Dissociative identity disorder (Multiple personality disorder) have higher suicide rates. PTSD has a higher suicide level. Doctors, police, psychiatrists, soldiers, also have higher levels of suicide. Police and soldiers likely because of PTSD. Physicians and Psychiatrists because none of them are normal in the first place (I’m one of them).
See the problem now.
These people require intensive mental health intervention, not gender affirmation which resolves nothing. Certain Medical centers , gender Affirming services, pharmaceuticals (hormones and puberty blockers) etc. = Big bucks.
Follow the money.
The left knows how the National Socialists and Fascists came to power and held onto it through the use of thugs and bullies, and through censorship. Truly, I never thought I’d see what I’m seeing happening in America as the left fundamentally transforms the country as BHO promised he would.
Can we please stop using “allegedly” to mean allegations by just anyone? It used to be that “allegedly” referred to actual charges or maybe sworn statements. The video shows what happened.
That said, when cops don’t arrest people who assault others in the cops’ presence, we have a real problem. Unequal enforcement of the law really sucks.
I have a daughter who competes on boys teams. I know that cannot last forever.
Instead of destroying women’s sports, why don’t they create a separate ‘trans’ competition category and let trans men compete with trans women. They can fight it out their frustration of the unfairness of it all amongst their own category of trans athletes and leave women’s sports alone.
Exactly, do not enable these delusional and disturbed individuals to co opt the terms man and woman. Label them “unsure and searching, eunuchs and the confused” and set aside a facility in which they can exist.
The Prof and others need to accept that this isn’t ‘protesting’ any longer – it is blind, ignorant rage that has escalated to actual violence, and it is fully endorsed by the DNC whole hog. I am sickened by what the globalists are doing to the world and to our society. The left is *already* out of control; it’s only a matter of time before people begin to fight back. It is 100% the left’s fault. Biden’s gaslighting is so extraordinarily off the hook, dishonest, it makes the knees weak, the head spin. ENOUGH.
If anyone at the DNC is still in possession of a spine, they need to find and use it, stat.
All of these prog/left agitators have the mental capacity and emotional control of spoiled toddlers when they don’t get their way. Perhaps each and everyone of them would profit from 2 years or more spent with a Marine Drill Sergeant and learn a great deal of self control and understand just how insignificant their place is in this universe.
You are so, so correct!
@whimsicalmama
Yep, and let me tell you, they just get worse with each successive cohort. The stunt pulled on the floor in Tennessee (and AOC’s response to it. Groan)? He wasn’t expelled because he’s a brown person, he was expelled because he’s 12. I honestly don’t know what the solution to it is. The emotional maturity we expect in adults probably isn’t coming, ever, from any of these kids, and thanks to institutionalized fragility, they will not in a million years be fired or even reprimanded by their own team.
Male cross dressers are not women. They will NEVER be women. They are mentally ill, delusional feminized men. If they get themselves castrated, they become eunuchs. Not women. You know it. I know it. They know it. We all know it.
No matter how much makeup they apply; how many dresses and wigs they put on; or how big their fake boobs are after surgery, they will forever be eunuchs. Not women. No amount of trickery, lies, deception, censorship or violence will change that. The FACT is that castrated males are eunuchs. Not women.
I grew up on a farm. Male cattle are called bulls. Bull calves not intended for breeding get castrated. They are then called steers. Male hogs are called boars. Male hogs that will not become breeders get castrated. They are then referred to as barrows.
Nobody deludes themselves that castrated bulls magically become cows after they’ve been castrated. Boars do not magically become sows or gilts after they are castrated.
‘If Gaines was struck’ if she says she was struck , I believe her being that no one was held accountable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppCIkvD977s
“If I transitioned when I was young I wouldn’t have had my children. I can’t imagine not having my children.”
So here is Admirial Levine admitting it was a good for him to wait to transition until she got older, so that he/she was able to have children. But now she’s pushing for pre-pubescent children and their parents to have the right to surgically remove their God-given body parts? Okay, then. Let them. Why should we care if they don’t?
I am always in favor of allowing Darwin’s principle to thin the herd, so to speak. Unfortunately, those who should be culled from this herd are the parents, not the innocent and duped child being allowed to be mutilated because the parents are hostage to a mental illness enabled by the prog/left.
Woke Leftists will continue to escalate their hateful rhetoric until they only see violence as justified action.
The parallels to Mao’s Culture Revolution are frighting.
“The incident is all too familiar today. These activists have every right to protest. These are issues that go to the core identity of people on both sides. However, protesters do not have a right to disrupt a class or speech.”
I would strongly disagree. This is not an issue of identity; it is a symptom of mental illness.
If you consider it an issue of ‘identity,’ then please define identity in legal, as well as sociological and philosophical terms.
In reality, what is happening is that the Democratic Party, a number of NGOs, and more than a few individuals are attempting to normalize deviant behavior and to make the outliers the normal and normal people outliers.
I urge Prof. Turley to think about what he is condoning with claiming that “activists have every right to protest” because the “issues” in question “go to the core identity of people on both sides.” That is a metaphysical statement which can only be justified by an appeal to metaphysical arguments, and metaphysics has not been a basic principle of law since the 1700s. In effect, by accepting such assertions, you are dragging the world back to the middle ages when theology dominated.
The article mentions her husband. Trust me, if someone were to even touch my wife they’d need corrective surgery to ever walk again, charges be damned.
“[I]f someone were to even touch my wife they’d need corrective surgery to ever walk again, charges be damned.”
Good for you!
Currentitguy, if you did that, you might be charged with assault because that is what it is unless it was contemporaneous. If it happened at the time, you might be charged with assault and a hate crime in some leftist communities because you responded negatively to a protected class.
In NYC, with 84.5% democrats, you might even be found guilty. They don’t want to be harassed or looked down on by their fellow citizen.
Gaines should press charges and not let this go.
Anyone assaulted in these protests happening around the country needs to press charges and aggressively pursue every legal pathway available.
Do not let these militants get away with their violence.
You touch me, I’m pressing charges. No exceptions.
Watch as Svelaz and “Anonymous” come on here to tell us that Turley is either wrong about this issue, shouldn’t discuss this issue or that Trump and Fox News are bad.
Come on lefties, discuss this issue. Come on lefties, discuss the fact that another trans person was planning on shooting up a school. Come on lefties, discuss the fact that the WH through KJP just yesterday, two weeks after a trans school shooting and the day after a prevented school shooting, stated that trans kids need to fight back.
The left thinks that the trans issue is a good wedge issue for them….it isn’t. Even the gay community disagrees with the “tarns kids” canard. Kids want to be dinosaurs when they are 7 and yet these lunatics are saying that they need to be able to have life altering health care because of what they think at 7.
PS. The other day in MN the far left AG, Keith Ellison, had to reprimand a local DA for offering a plea deal to a old home invader and murderer who was 15 at the time of the murder, that would have given the shooter TWO YEARS. The local lunatic Soros backed DA said that the MURDERER was 15 and at 15 the person’s frontal lobes aren’t mature and they can’t make good decisions AND YET I AM 100% SURE THAT THIS SAME LUNATIC SUPPORTS SURGERY FOR MINORS IN ORDER TO ” CHANGE” THEIR GENDER.
Hullbobby, you say ‘trans kid’…in the case of Nashville, I say Christian 2nd amendment fanatic.
That statement is due to a lack of knowledge. The truth is anti-Christian trans with hate imbued with leftism. There is no evidence of the person’s feelings on the second amendment.
Probably anonymous is infatuated with the trans and very much the same.
So now….the sexually confused are actually engaging in violence and we are not seeing them charged with Hate Crimes?
What if the “roles” were reversed…..oh pardon me….that would be a Hate Crime wouldn’t it?
Sounds like the Racism scam doesn’t it?
How many arrests and prosecutions are going to be the result of this violence….care to make a wager there is none at all?
Ralph, they are now a protected class.
Once again, women are being maligned and belittled by men. No self respecting male would compete in a female sport. They can slap on makeup, wear a dress and put their hair in piggy tails, but they still have a male body in strength and structure.
A person dares to call a spade a spade and they are attacked, shouted down and gaslighted.
It would be fitting if all the female athletes and spectators would simply walk out when a man walks on the field to compete in a female sport. The world has managed for thousands and thousands of years. It has only been in the last ten or less years that this has become an issue.If they are a male who identifies as a woman then they can identify to their heart’s desire, but they must still compete as a male.
Regarding the violent activists, their demonstrated behavior is on level with the Nazi prison guards and Brownshirts.
If they can get you to believe that it’s ok for men to compete in women’s sports and go into their locker rooms and shower with them. They can get you to believe anything. This is crazy.
This is unacceptable behavior. The person who hit the speakers needs to be identified and appropriate action taken.
Perhaps you can start explaining what actions can be taken to stop this revolution in our culture and public square. It is not enough anymore to just point out injustices and radical behavior. What exactly can be done?
it is WHAT Fascists DO…look up Brown shirts Germany, Italy Blackshirts, etc
Exactly.