A Betrayal of Equal Protection, A Betrayal of the Gospel: LOVEboldly's Statement on West Virginia v. B. P. J. and Little v. Hecox:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 30, 2026

Contact: Rev. Dr. Ben Huelskamp, Executive Director, LOVEboldly

Email: bhuelskamp@loveboldly.org

Phone: 614-918-8109

A Betrayal of Equal Protection, A Betrayal of the Gospel: LOVEboldly Statement on West Virginia v. B. P. J. and Little v. Hecox:

Today, the United States Supreme Court affirmed that states may bar transgender girls and women from playing on the sports teams that match who they are.

We want to name this plainly: this decision is wrong, it’s cruel, and it will hurt children. As people of faith, we cannot and will not stay quiet about it.

The Court built its opinion on a story about safety and fairness. But the actual story, buried inside the ruling itself, is about an eleven-year-old who wanted to run cross-country with her friends. B. P. J. has never known an “advantage” the majority claims to be protecting against; she’s only known the particular joy of belonging to a team. Lindsay Hecox simply wanted to compete in college. The Court took that joy and used it as the occasion to rule against an entire class of children and adults it will likely never meet.

We don’t accept the premise that protecting cisgender girls in sports requires excluding Transgender girls from them. That premise was contested in the record itself, and the Court chose not to let the facts get in the way of the outcome it wanted. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent, the majority reached for “a contorted logic” and a “diminished view of equal protection.” We agree.

But our objection isn’t only legal. It’s theological.

We believe every person bears the image of God, the imago Dei, not in spite of who they are but precisely in the particularity of who they are. Trans girls and women are not exceptions to be litigated. They are beloved, full stop. A faith that claims to follow a Christ who centered the marginalized, who reached past every purity code of his day to touch the people his society had decided didn’t belong, cannot turn around and tell a child she doesn’t belong on her own team. Howard Thurman wrote that we must find out what makes us come alive, because the world needs people who have come alive. Sports make children come alive, the friendships, the discipline, the unglamorous joy of practicing alone in a backyard until you get it right. This ruling tells Transgender youth that the world has already decided that particular kind of aliveness isn’t for them.

We are also clear about who this ruling actually protects. It claims to defend “women’s sports,” but it does so by sacrificing actual, named, individual girls and women on the altar of an abstraction. That’s not protection. That’s scapegoating with a legal opinion attached.

So here is what we will do. We will keep building training pastors, ministry leaders, and congregations to lead in ways that don’t make Transgender people prove their belonging. We will keep showing up at the statehouse and in the broad public square. We will keep telling Transgender people, individually and by name, that the faith we practice has room for them and more than room, a place set at the table.

To our beloved Trans friends and colleagues: yes, the Court has ruled, but we have not changed our minds, and we’re not going anywhere. We stand with you and love you.

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LOVEboldly (www.loveboldly.org) is an Ohio, faith-based nonprofit working to create more spaces where LGBTQIA+ people can flourish in Christianity. We envision a world where Queer people of every faith can practice that faith without barriers.