An unlikely victory for advocates of protecting women's sports has rocked a deep-blue state — and LGBTQ protesters aren't at all happy about it.
While a blue wave swept the nation on Tuesday, some argue that common sense prevailed in Washington state.
'This vote is a testament that that evil will not win in our state.'
Washington Initiative 638's proposed update to existing law would require a signed physician's note that "verifies the student's biological sex" and would "prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students."
AP News reported that the initiative barring trans-identifying males from participating in women's sports passed with strong support: 1,438,212 votes, or 56.8%, in favor versus 1,094,168 votes, or 43.2%, against the measure, with 78.5% of the votes counted.
The organizers of the ballot initiative, Let's Go Washington, said the effort brought girls together: "They stood for their friends in other states because they have been forced to compete against boys in girls' sports."
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Let's Go Washington highlighted one advocate, Kendall Kotzmacher, who likewise celebrated the win on social media: "Common sense prevails!!"
Brian Heywood, the founder of Let's Go Washington, told Blaze News that this was a win for all of the girls who have been "told time and again by the majority party that their voices and opportunities don't matter."
"On election night," Heywood continued, "those girls saw that millions of Washingtonians stand with them and care that their sports are safe and fair. Washington’s girls are worth protecting and fighting for. Five years from now, I hope girl athletes don’t know this fight took place, because that will mean that they don’t have to carry the burden these girls did and that boys know their place is not in girls’ sports."
"This vote is a testament that that evil will not win in our state," Heywood added. "To every female athlete who wondered whether her voice mattered: Washington heard you."
LGBTQ advocates, however, saw the issue differently.
A number of supporters for "trans rights" gathered on Thursday night at Westlake Park in Seattle to reflect on the success of the initiative.
King 5 Seattle reported that many who gathered were "deeply" upset by the passage of the initiative. One person at the event called the results a "complete travesty." Another older attendee argued that it will have a "chilling effect on trans people of all ages."
Initiative 638 was the only ballot initiative that passed in the state. An initiative to repeal a millionaires' tax and an initiative to restore some parental rights in schools failed, perhaps indicating something unique about the issue of women's sports.
A spokesperson for Let's Go Washington told Blaze News that "fairness isn't a partisan issue," arguing that "nearly half of the people who signed the initiative in the first place were Democrats and independents, so it just proves that everyone cares about keeping girls' sports for girls."
Jennifer Sey, founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, told Blaze News: “The midterm results proved — despite deep-pocketed interest groups' efforts to label the initiatives as ‘right-wing’ and ‘bigoted’ — that protecting girls’ sports was never about right versus left; it’s about right versus wrong.”
Sey added: “Now party leaders must take heed: Your own base has spoken decisively. This is a watershed moment, though it will not end the debate. These measures will not finish the work. Laws never change culture by themselves. Twenty-one states still do not protect female categories. Undoubtedly, some will resist.
"The difference now is that Washington … parents and athletes have legal recourse."
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When I reviewed Lou Aguilar's “The Washington Trail” two years ago, I ended with a line from its hero, Mark Tristan, contemplating a poster of the John Wayne classic “El Dorado” hanging in his apartment.
“They don't make 'em any more,” he lamented. “Too triggering.”
Women are beautiful, men notice, and nobody apologizes. Masculinity is generally treated as a virtue rather than a medical condition.
He had a point about Hollywood. But Aguilar's novel suggested that the old-fashioned hero was alive and well.
The wisecracking former Army Ranger and his considerably more civilized partner, Neil Cork, belonged to an older tradition of detective fiction — tough men, beautiful women, actual villains, plenty of sex appeal, and little apparent concern about whether any of this had been approved by a sensitivity reader.
Now Tristan and Cork are back in “The Camelot Trail,” out November 17, and Aguilar has found an appropriately old-fashioned cause for them to defend.
Knights wantedThe trouble begins with Ian Ousby, an expatriate British literature professor teaching at Georgetown University. Ousby is also the author of a best-selling book called “Excalibur” and the leader of a rapidly growing youth movement of the same name.
His pitch is unlikely to endear him to the average HR department. Young men should become strong, Christian protectors and providers. Young women should embrace beauty, femininity, marriage, and motherhood. Western civilization is worth defending, and Arthurian chivalry might have something to teach a generation raised on TikTok.
Naturally, Ousby has enemies. He fled Britain after receiving death threats from Islamists, feminists, and assorted political radicals. His estranged wife works at the British embassy. And with an enormous Excalibur rally scheduled for the National Mall, somebody appears determined to kill him.
Or drive him insane. Ousby has begun seeing Laura Darwell, the great lost love of his youth, a woman he hasn't encountered in nearly 30 years. He spots her on a Metro platform and nearly gets himself killed trying to save her from an oncoming train. She appears again on Georgetown's famous Exorcist Steps, with similarly dangerous results.
The problem is that nobody else can see her.
Ousby hires Cork and Tristan to protect him and find out what's going on. Before long, they're up against something considerably more sinister than a lovesick professor's hallucinations.
Boys' own adventureAs in “The Washington Trail,” much of the pleasure comes from watching two very different men work the same case.
Cork is thoughtful, learned, happily married, and still somewhat sheepish about carrying a gun. Tristan is an Afghanistan veteran more comfortable throwing a punch than cracking a book.
When Cork introduces Ousby as an English literature professor, Tristan responds with an apparently involuntary utterance: “Pip.”
Cork explains that he helped Tristan with a Dickens term paper and that his partner still suffers flashbacks.
“Pip,” Tristan repeats.
Aguilar wisely hasn't tampered with this dynamic. Cork does the Sherlock Holmes work; Tristan handles the more physical end of the business. But both are capable of surprising us — and each other.
Raquel Valdez, the beautiful Venezuelan former cop introduced in the first novel, also gets considerably more to do this time around. She's a crack shot but embarrassed by how little she knows about books, art, and poetry. Ousby begins introducing her to that world, while Tristan — to his own slight surprise — encourages her.
“The world just seems bigger, more mysterious and exciting,” she tells him.
Aguilar seems to share her enthusiasm.
Beltway bailiwickThe author has also retained one of the first book's best qualities: He knows Washington.
Georgetown row houses, the Metro, the National Mall, the Exorcist Steps — these aren't generic thriller backdrops with famous names pasted on them. Aguilar worked as a young reporter in Washington, and his familiarity with the city gives the increasingly fantastic plot a useful physical reality.
And fantastic it gets. What begins as a bodyguard assignment and a possible case of induced hallucination expands into international intrigue, experimental technology, kidnapping, and a conspiracy with consequences far beyond Ousby's personal safety.
The mixture recalls the old Tom Clancy technothrillers, complete with elaborate schemes, exotic hardware, and geopolitical villains. The machinery can get rather complicated, and the science occasionally demands a generous suspension of disbelief. But Aguilar keeps things moving, helped enormously by the fact that his detectives are enjoyable company even when they're simply trading insults.
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World Castle Publishing LLC; UCG/Getty Images
Politically incorrectAguilar also continues his one-man campaign to restore sex appeal to popular fiction. Women are beautiful, men notice, and nobody apologizes. Masculinity is generally treated as a virtue rather than a medical condition.
Aguilar's politics are decidedly conservative, but he doesn't treat disagreement as an inexcusable moral flaw. Liberals, take note.
One of the refreshing things about “The Washington Trail” was that its left-leaning characters weren't necessarily stupid or evil. “The Camelot Trail” continues that tradition, particularly with Tristan's great love, television journalist Nina Holt. She's liberal enough for Tristan to call her network “Commie News Network,” yet remains smart, funny, sexy, and entirely worthy of his devotion.
Their political arguments sound like arguments between two people who know and love each other. Aguilar has a decided preference for one side, but he doesn't let it spoil a good romance.
Nor does he spare his own hero a little ridicule. Tristan's enthusiasm for Ousby's movement cools momentarily when he discovers that its prescription for “tough guys and hot chicks” includes holy matrimony.
“Oh,” says Tristan.
A new CamelotOusby also informs Tristan that he shares a name with Sir Tristan, one of the knights of the Round Table, famous for his doomed romance.
“The story of my life,” he replies.
For all his womanizing and wisecracks, Tristan has always been a fundamentally chivalric character. Put somebody helpless in danger, and he'll go toward the danger. Cork will too, although preferably after figuring out what's happening.
Aguilar has built an entertaining thriller around the unfashionable proposition that courage, loyalty, romantic love, and duty might still be worth cultivating. He makes the case without sacrificing the wisecracks, fistfights, pretty women, or increasingly outlandish perils that make this sort of fiction such a pleasure.
“They don't make 'em any more”?
Readers of "The Camelot Trail" may beg to differ.
“The Camelot Trail” will be published November 17 by World Castle Publishing and is available for preorder here. In the original publishing run of “The Washington Trail,” “Mark Tristan” was named “Mark Slade.” In the republished version and in books going forward, his name is “Mark Tristan.”
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