United States girls’ religious baseball ban

This video from the USA says about itself:

Our Lady of Sorrows, Ariz. baseball team, forfeits state title because a girl

A baseball team in Arizona that worked all season to reach the state championship game has forfeited the chance to play for a state title because its opponent has a girl starting at second base. As initially reported by the Arizona Republic, then followed upon by a variety of other Arizona and national sources, Phoenix (Ariz.) Our Lady of Sorrows Academy’s baseball team decided to forfeit its scheduled Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship matchup rather than face off against Mesa (Ariz.) Preparatory Academy, which features a second baseman named Paige Sultzbach.

Because playing Mesa Prep would require competing against a team featuring a girl, Our Lady of Sorrows decided that playing the game would violate the school’s mission to teach boys and girls separately, as the school made clear in a statement on Thursday. The separation of the sexes is a key tenet of the Society of St. Pius X, a separatist branch of the Catholic Church of which Our Lady of Sorrows is a part.

The Society of St. Pius X is a religiously and politically extreme Right organization. Until recently, they were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

However, not long ago, the pope re-admitted them to the church.

This meant that one of their top leaders, anti-Semitic Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson, became an official Roman Catholic bishop.

While the cancellation of the state title game is a disappointment for Sultzbach and her teammates, it was hardly unanticipated. The teenager sat out two previous games between the schools because of Our Lady of Sorrows’ religious beliefs, but she was unwilling to sit out the biggest game of the season which she and her teammates had worked to reach.

That desire was only stoked by Sultzbach’s absence in the prior matchups between the teams, as the teen told the Republic.
“I felt like any passionate athletic person would feel (in that situation),” Sultzbach told the Republic. “I don’t want our very first high-school baseball team to win the championship on a forfeit.”

The Mesa Prep baseball team — MesaPrepAthletics.org
While the forfeit will officially make Mesa Prep the ACAA state champion, the school’s athletic director made clear that her team didn’t want to earn its state crown that way.

“What true athlete would want to win or lose a championship game by forfeit?” Mesa Prep AD Amy Arnold, who also happens to be the only female football coach in Arizona, told the Republic. … “I respect their views, but it’s a bit out of the 18th century.”

By Soraya Chemaly, feminist, satirist and media critic in the USA:

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

Posted: 05/21/2012 12:31 pm

Dear Girls,

You are powerful beyond words, because you threaten to unravel the control of corrupt men who abuse their authority.

In the United States last week there were people who wouldn’t let boys play a baseball championship final because a girl was on the opposing team. She’d already had to sit out two games because of their demands. Why? Did she, a competitive athlete and a member of her team, chose to? Was she being good and respectful when she acceded to their demands? Why were they not asked to forfeit their games? What messages were sent to her and her teammates? This is not complicated. It sent the wrong messages. Confusing messages. Incoherent messages. You need to know that she should have been allowed to play and not have had to sit out two games. These people, and others like them, all over the world, led exclusively by religious men, are scared of you and will not let you be. You worry them constantly.

If you were not powerful, they would not take you so seriously and they take you very, very seriously. You should, too. You can set the world on fire.

The ‘Inappropriate’ Outfit That Got My Daughter Into Trouble At School: here.