Leagues

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposal

Competitive teams should organize and play in multiple leagues. Age and sex are typically used for organizing teams. This should continue and teams should also organize larger age brackets and all-sex leagues that are divided by height, weight, strength, speed, or skill.

Intent

This proposal will allow more people to compete together, when they want to compete together, or separately when they want to stay separate. This proposal isn’t intended to force anyone to play or compete against people who they don’t want to play or compete against. It is only intended to encourage teams and leagues to
organize alternative brackets and allow people to compete in them if they want to.

For example, females who want to play or compete only against other females should be able to join a team and league that does that, or an individual competition bracket that is only females; and females who want to play or compete against anyone in their height and weight bracket, or strength and speed bracket, could join a team and league that does that.

Discussion

When people organize athletic competitions, that’s protected by the right to peaceful assembly. When they create rules about who can participate and about how the competition will be conducted, and players and teams agree to those rules, that’s protected by the right to consent. If the rules say that only males or only females or only kids or only seniors can play or compete in a certain bracket, that’s protected by the right to peaceful association. The government cannot force people to play together, that would violate their right to peaceful association. And the right to equal opportunity is not violated when there is a multitude of teams, leagues, and brackets in which people can get together to play and compete and there’s something for everyone.

For example, if people create two female-only teams to play and compete against each other, and a male wants to join that team because the male wants to be a female or identifies more as a female than a male, denying the male from participation in those teams protects the right to peaceful association all the females on the teams and does NOT violate the male’s right to equal opportunity because the male can join either a male-only team (which would not deny entry to a male) or an any-sex team which accepts players of any sex (which would not deny entry to anyone based on their sex). Because the same opportunity is still available to that male player, the right to equal opportunity is not violated. If there isn’t an any-sex team already formed, the right thing to do would be for people to organize one in order to protect the right to equal opportunity of anyone who isn’t eligible to join the single-sex teams. Furthermore, it would be an honorable act of inclusion for people who are eligible for a single-sex team to also join the new any-sex team in order for there to be enough players to make a team, and for the people running the league to organize at least two any-sex teams for play and competition. Conversely, in an area where there are many non-binary individuals and they want to form their own “queer-only” teams could do that without violating anyone else’s right to equal opportunity as long as other teams are available (or will be organized) for people who aren’t queer.

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