The rot of gender ideology continues to make its way through the sports world. Now, liberals are punishing high school athletes in the name of “gender affirmation.”

Mid Vermont Christian, a high school in White River Junction, Vermont, is the latest target of leftist ire. The school’s girls' basketball team forfeited a Division IV playoff game against Long Trail because Long Trail had a boy on its team. “We believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players,” MVCS Head of School Vicky Fogg said .

As a result, the entire school is being punished. The Vermont Principals’ Association, the governing body for high school sports in the state, unanimously voted to ban Mid Vermont Christian from all “VPA-sanctioned activities and tournaments.”

“If you don’t want to follow VPA rules, that’s fine,” VPA Executive Director Jay Nichols said . “But then you’re just not a VPA member. It’s fairly simple.”

Yes, Mid Vermont Christian, if you want to protect the safety of your female athletes and ensure that they are playing in fair competitions, you have no place in Vermont high school athletics. When you signed up to play girls' basketball, you signed up to play against boys. It’s just that simple.

The VPA alleged that Mid Vermont Christian violated the organization’s policy on discrimination and harassment by refusing to force its girls to play basketball against a boy. The question of fairness is beyond dispute, as male athletes have distinct physical and athletic advantages compared to female athletes, even at the high school level. But even the question of safety has been disregarded by the VPA. Basketball is a physical sport, and protecting girls from a male athlete that has natural strength advantages should be a priority.

But of course it is not because the priority is to butcher and ignore the scientific reality we all know: men and women are not the same, and you cannot switch from being one to being the other. As a result, not only did MVCS have to choose between a forfeit and an unfair competition that risked the safety of its players, but the VPA decided to punish every athlete at the school, male or female, by banning the entire school from competition.

This wasn’t done to uphold the sanctity of VPA’s policies. It was done as a warning to other schools that recognize how unfair it is to force its girls' teams to play against boys. Bend the knee to gender ideology, or you too will be banned from all sports. The VPA, like other liberals pushing this, want silence and complicity, and they don’t care how many high schoolers they have to punish to achieve it.