The idea that people can switch their gender got a hearing on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives when two Democrat congresswomen read the pro-transgender children’s book called I Am Jazz. Transgenderism has been going mainstream for years but not all are accepting it, including high school wrestler Brendan Johnston. Johnston is a senior at the Classical Academy in Colorado Springs and was slated to wrestle a girl who identifies as a boy in the state wrestling tournament. But he declined and said “I don’t think that’s really appropriate [to wrestle] with a young lady… It’s also very aggressive and I’m not really, I guess, comfortable with that.” Just as Johnston refused to go to the mat with a transgender wrestler, each of us will be forced to wrestle with how we address transgenderism in a careful way.
“I don't want to treat a young lady like that on the mat. Or off the mat. And not to disrespect the heart or the effort that she's put in. That's not what I want to do, either,” Johnston told The Denver Post. “Wrestling is something we do, it's not who we are. And there are more important things to me than my wrestling. And I'm willing to have those priorities.”