OPINION: One woman's 'nonsense' is another's golden 'opportunity'

Oct 26, 2008 (The Tribune-Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- DIS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- I had a great upbringing under Title IX. I can't imagine where I'd be without the opportunities provided to me in sports.

-- Sarah Palin, March 2007

A few days before Sarah Palin was named as John McCain's running mate, the super-conservative, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly let go with a typical blast at Title IX.

In a Townhall.com essay, Schlafly ticked off all the disappointments she saw from U.S. teams at the Beijing Olympics and declared, "Title IX has crippled our national competitiveness."

Title IX, of course, was part of the 1972 Education Amendments passed by Congress. It prohibits gender discrimination in educational programs, including athletics, if an institution receives federal funding.

After passage, Title IX was hobbled by the Reagan administration and nearly eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court. With the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, however, Title IX, finally, was given a steel spine; young women and girls were guaranteed the opportunity to learn the virtues of competitive sports.

One of those grateful beneficiaries, it turns out, is a woman Schlafly has proclaimed "right on every issue" -- Sarah Palin.

In several interviews and speeches, the GOP vice presidential candidate has singled out Title IX for praise. At a Nevada fundraiser Tuesday, the Alaska governor said Title IX "opened more than doors to just the gymnasium. It allowed us to view ourselves, and our futures, in different ways."

In March 2007, not long after she took over as governor, Palin told Alaska Business Monthly: "Sports taught me that gender isn't an issue. In fact, when people talk about me being the first female governor, I'm a little absent from that discussion because I've never thought of gender as an issue."

That attitude was echoed in Palin's interview with ABC's Charles Gibson last month. Asked if it is sexist to question Palin's ability to balance family duties and the vice presidency, she said:

"I don't know. I'm lucky to have been brought up in a family where gender has never been an issue. I'm a product of Title IX, also, where we had equality in schools that was just being ushered in with sports and with equal opportunity for education, all of my life. I'm part of that generation, where that question is kind of irrelevant, because it's accepted. Of course you can be the vice president and you can raise a family."

Palin and thousands of other female athletes can consider questions about equal opportunity "kind of irrelevant" and be "a little absent" from discussions about sex discrimination in sports and education for one major reason:

The people Schlafly refers to as "radical" and "anti-male feminists" refused to go back into the bleachers after they got a taste of Title IX liberation. Pressure by women's rights activists is what kept Congress in the game when Title IX was threatened.

Had it been up to the Schlaflys of America, no athlete with xx chromosomes would be getting a full scholarship to row crew, shoot hoops or spike volleyballs. Females in public high schools would still be wearing gym suits for extra-mural games at 3 p.m., and selling Cokes and popcorn at halftime to pay for the fun.

Palin gave a quick nod to those activists in her speech in Nevada. Of Title IX, she said, "We owed that opportunity to women, to feminists, who came before us."

But, quick as you can call, "Traveling!" Palin added, "A belief in equal opportunity is not just the cause of feminists. It's the creed of our country."

Right, it's the creed of people like Schlafly, who helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment when Palin was in grade school and who continues in her ninth decade to drive wedges between women and men over Title IX.

In her Townhall essay, Schlafly was inventive in arguing her theory that Title IX quotas and fairer funding have crippled U.S. Olympic teams. Take the "devastating outcome" in men's freestyle wrestling, a sport Schlafly says was "repeatedly dominated" by Americans but now isn't. (U.S. freestylers won 12 medals from 1984 through 1992 and 10 from '96 through '08.)

In Beijing, the only U.S. freestyle medal was won, Schlafly wrote, by "the son of illegal aliens who did not wrestle in college." (That would be gold medalist Henry Cejudo, whose mother, now a legal resident, came to the United States when she was 15.)

In an odd bit of evidence, Schlafly said that a drop in the number of men's collegiate wrestling teams "has nothing to do with lack of funding, since wrestling is one of the most inexpensive of sports." The culprit, then? It's "feminist ideology that demands eliminating macho sports in order to meet the foolish Title IX quotas." (Macho like football?)

Schlafly also noted all the gold medals China's male gymnasts copped, adding that the host country is "not restricted by feminist nonsense." (True that. And mandated abortion for Chinese women who already have one child also indicates a lack of feminist nonsense.)

In the 2007 Alaska Business Monthly interview, Palin listed some of the skills she picked up as a high school cross-country runner and basketball player: "... self-discipline, healthy competition, to be gracious in victory and defeat, and the importance of being part of a team and understanding what part you play on the team. You all work together to reach a goal ..."

Perhaps she can explain that to the founder of the Eagle Forum, some day.

Near the end of her Townhall essay, Schlafly took a little detour to condemn Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard.

Beard made four Olympic squads, won seven medals for three of them and served as co-captain in Beijing. She also posed nude last year in Playboy, which wiped out her stellar career for Schlafly, who then concluded, "Today's aspiring athletes lack the great role models of the past, and Title IX is not working."

One thing Schlafly neglected to mention: Beard grew to greatness as a teenager, competing and winning for Irvine High School -- a public California school whose girls' swim program exists and thrives because of Title IX.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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