The next great Civil Right

Howard Dean was interviewed by Alan Colmes last night. He trotted out the usual Democrat boilerplate, implying that repealing the death tax is somehow "immoral," and labeling President Bush "devisive" because, well, anyone who doesn't agree with Dean is devisive. Buried in the middle of the interview was this little gem:

There are a lot of women, for example, who couldn't participate in sports. My wife didn't have equal access to sports. My daughter did.

Judge Roberts wants to undo that, according to his writings.

There you have it. Judge Roberts wants to undo the greatest civil liberty of all, equal access to sports.

Dean is, of course, referring to Title IX, which states "that a school is in compliance with gender equity laws only if the percentage of women participating in athletics is equal [within 5%] to the percentage of women making up the student body."

Here's what Dean's "equal access to sports" really means:

Presently there are about 190,000 male athletes and 110,000 female athletes, participating on a nevertheless equal quantity of teams. In the wake of budget cuts, proportionality with the 14 female sports (and their corresponding 110,000 participants) would essentially have to be obtained by completely eliminating nearly a dozen MALE programs on the national level. Those programs include: Wrestling (6,500 participants), Swimming (7,500), Soccer (15,000), Track (16,000), Track I (18,000), Gymnastics (500 participants), Fencing (800), Lacrosse (5,000), Ice Hockey (3,500) and Volleyball (1,000). Eliminating these men's programs would leave five male sports (Baseball, Tennis, Golf, Basketball and Football) along with a little over 100,000 male participants. Then there would finally be the so-called "equity" between men's programs and the comparable quantity of females who opted to go out for a sports team.

So, to Howard Dean, equal access to sports is so important that 80,000 men shoud be denied any access to sports because fewer women are interested.

Full transcript here.