In this week's episode of Snollygoster, Ohio's politics podcast from WOSU, host Mike Thompson discusses the proposed legislation that would prevent transgender athletes from participating in school and college sports. Ohio High School Athletic Association spokesperson Tim Stried joins the show.
Behind The Masks
The state of Ohio no longer requires you to wear a face-covering if you’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine. Because the state does not have a system to tell if you’ve had the vaccine, Ohio really no longer requires anyone to wear a face-covering.
Most of Gov. Mike DeWine’s health orders expired at midnight June 2.
Restaurants are back to full capacity if they want. Sports arenas, stadiums and entertainment venues can all fill the house if they want (with vaccinated people of course).
In the meantime, we have another round of winners in the Vax-A-Million lottery.
Vax-A-Million fever is spreading in Ohio and nearly a half-million people signed up between the first drawing and this week’s second drawing.
The Transgender Ban In Search Of A Problem
Ohio lawmakers are considering two bills that would ban transgender girls from joining girls or women’s teams in high school and college.
The Republican women backing these bills say transgender girls are born male and have biological advantages that could make them stronger and faster than competitors who are not transgender.
Opponents say it’s not really an issue because they are so few transgender female athletes and the bill would just exclude members of an already vulnerable population.
The NCAA, which governs college sports, requires transgender female athletes to take hormones to lower their testosterone before competing. The International Olympic Committee has the same rules.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association has had a policy in place since 2014 and has only had to rule on the issue a few dozen times.
Snollygoster Of The Week
Some politicians burned their COVID masks to make the day Ohio’s Mask Mandate ended. Josh Mandel did it. Dave Yost did it even though he had a somewhat serious case of COVID.
Hopefully, he wore a face-covering in the days he was contagious. If he did, he probably kept someone close to him or someone buying eggs next to him in the grocery store from getting COVID. Yet he could not resist the temptation to play to the anti-mask base by burning a mask on video.
Send questions and comments to snollygoster@wosu.org.