(LifeSiteNews) – Actor Hugh Laurie dissented from liberal orthodoxy in a recent social media exchange, sticking up for Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player Sophie Cunningham and affirming he does not support making female athletes compete against men.

Cunningham, a guard for the Indiana Fever, drew national attention last month when she wanted to “protect women’s sports, and said, “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that … I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

As picked up by the Washington Times, on August 9 Laurie, who starred in the Fox medical drama House MD from 2004 to 2012, quipped on X it was “(s)trange this whole broigus should happen in professional basketball, where 99.9% of the world are, effectively, ‘women.’  Per Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated, if you’re an American man between 20 and 40 years of age and 7 feet tall or more, there’s a 17% chance you’re already in the NBA.”

The remark set off a discussion with various users, including comedy writer and Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, who has since deleted several of his posts, but according to the Times, called Laurie “cowardly” for allegedly “distanc(ing) yourself” from the question of transgender athletes.

Laurie responded, “No, I don’t believe men should compete against women.  I thought I’d made that pretty clear.  If you’d looked”; and “yes, I support Sophie Cunningham.  And you, some of the time.”

Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.

There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.

In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen (biological men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”

Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, which found that more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.

In America since the 1980s, more than 1,941 gold medals in female events that would have gone to female athletes have instead been claimed by men identifying as “trans women,” and along with them more than $493,173 in prize money across more than 10,067 amateur and professional events, according to data compiled by He Cheated and reviewed by Concerned Women for America.

Share