If Maine Democrats and their left-wing NGO financiers can get you to believe that men can become women, they can get you to believe anything. They can get you to believe that minors can consent to life-altering surgeries when they can’t even legally consent to getting a tattoo. They can get you to believe that young men competing in young women’s sports is fair play and that it’s marching towards social justice, even as it tramples the hopes and dreams of female athletes. They get you to believe all of this through the mastery of word-smithing and narrative crafting.

Representative Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) shattered that narrative with the simple act of posting two photos next to each other on social media. The two photos showed a male finishing 3rd in the state pole vault championship last year in the Men’s Division and then the same male competing as a female in the Women’s Division this year and finishing first. The side-by-side pictures told a story that has played out many times across the nation over the past few years. Because Libby’s post has gone viral, Maine Democrats are now in damage control mode.

Rather than address the disparity in equity that the two photos show, Maine Democrats are now arguing that Libby must be punished for posting public pictures of minors without their consent. They are doing this to distract from the fact that the two photos side-by-side closed the argument about men playing in women’s sports without saying a word.

Speaker Ryan Fecteau even wrote a politically charged op-ed in the Bangor Daily News that stated:

“I think we can all agree that our kids deserve better than to be used as political fodder for internet bullies. It isn’t just cruel or mean-spirited to take advantage of a minor in this way. It can also be downright dangerous for the young person involved. It can impact their health and their safety, at school, and in their communities.”

This is straight out of the Democrat playbook for controlling the narrative. Be overtly political while name calling out your opponent for being overtly political, then shift into emotional blackmail so that any rebuttal from your opponent is framed as aggression towards children. The Speaker is the one who wrote and pushed a political narrative and had his friends at the dying BDN publish it, not Rep. Libby. There are also rumors that Fecteau and his Maine Democrat colleagues are planning to censure Libby this coming Tuesday for her sins against the prevailing narrative. If that is not politicizing an issue, I don’t know what is.

Speaker Fecteau also made sure to genuflect at the altar of identity politics when he writes in his BDN piece:

“To young people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, know that I see you and I stand with you. And there are many other leaders in the Legislature who stand with you, too.”

This is a clear example in Maine politics of that famous line in Orwell’s Animal Farm that says:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Clearly, in the Speaker’s opinion LGBTQ+ athletes are more equal than their competition who compete simply as young men and young women. Hard work, meritocracy and potential athletic scholarships for female athletes are being sacrificed for identity politics by the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and those other ‘leaders’ in the Legislature who are putting their far-left ideology over the opportunity for Maine’s young women to excel, succeed and play at the next level in their chosen sports against fair competition.

Mainers’ eyes have been opened after seeing the story told by the images Libby posted. The carefully crafted words of political operatives will not shut them again. The truth is plain to see for anyone not blinded by an almost religious devotion to a political ideology. It’s time to close this chapter of misguided history and have males compete against males and females compete against females again. The social engineering experiment is over, and the result is failure. We can see it with our own eyes.