Dispute Over Transgender Members Rattles Daughters of the American Revolution:
One of the largest and oldest patriotic groups is in turmoil over males being admitted as ‘daughters’—and GOP lawmakers are intervening.
Heidi Wiedamann joined Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) for two reasons: She is a proud, verified descendant of Revolutionary-era patriots, and she values the female-only camaraderie DAR offers.
“I wanted the privacy of a women’s group ... to commune with other women,” Wiedamann told The Epoch Times.
Wiedamann, 63, of Cincinnati, was dismayed to learn that over the years, males have quietly been permitted to join DAR—one of the nation’s oldest and largest patriotic societies.
For her, that revelation felt like a gut-punch. Wiedamann said it hit especially hard because she recently quit a sport she loved—master’s swimming for women—after males were allowed to compete in it.
“Women have a right to women-only spaces and sports,” she said.
Implications of the DAR transgender-member dispute extend beyond the group’s 190,000 members, Wiedamann said.
“It directly ties to many evolving situations around the country and the world,” she said.
About 3,000 DAR chapters dot all 50 U.S. states, plus Guam and 12 foreign countries. More than 1 million women have joined DAR since its founding more than a century ago, DAR’s website says.
The group’s internal feud over transgender-identifying members simmered for several years before it boiled over, drawing action from Republican lawmakers.
Congressmembers Intervene
Last month, Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Integrity Act.
If approved, it would amend DAR’s 1896 congressional charter to expressly block males from membership.
The charter also federally protects DAR’s name and insignia and allows DAR to ask the Smithsonian Institution to accept its historic materials.
Further, the charter permits DAR to “acquire, own, lease, encumber, and transfer property” as desired. That is notable because the group’s headquarters—including a museum, convention hall, and other buildings—occupy an entire city block just west of the White House.
When announcing his bill, Cline contended that the organization has veered off course.
“Rather than honoring and preserving a lineage-based organization for women, it has embraced radical gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve,” he said in a statement.
Blackburn said her proposal intends to “stop the organization from erasing biological reality and ensure it is reserved for the real daughters of the American Revolution.”
DAR leadership did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment.
Several women’s organizations and conservative groups are backing the Cline and Blackburn bills.
Transgender advocates lined up to oppose the measures, denouncing them as government overreach. --->READ MORE HERE
Daughters Of American Revolution President Squashes Another Attempt To Preserve The Org’s Female-Only Charge
In latest letter, DAR President reassures that the org’s betrayal of its female-centric mission and the members who care about it continues
The women fighting to protect the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution’s female-only membership received another blow this week after DAR President General Ginnie Sebastian Storage refused chapters’ requests for a special session to vote on the definition of “woman.”
The August 6 rejection, published to the DAR Members’ Website and distributed to members by at least one state regent, suggests DAR national leadership, led by Storage, is committed to accommodating men at the expense its members, including thousands of whom departed over the DAR’s years-long abandonment of its female-centric mission.
“The National Society’s representative body has already fully considered and decided the proposed resolution,” Storage wrote. “Article VIII does not require the President General to convene that body only months later to take another vote on the identical resolution. Accordingly, no additional special meeting will be convened.”
Storage acknowledged that the requests for a special session stemmed “from chapters that previously sought an October special meeting, as well as requests from some additional chapters.” She concluded, however, that indulging those requests “is neither required by the National Bylaws nor consistent with the governance responsibilities of the President General” after the national society vote earlier this year.
A previous attempt to limit membership to those “born female” was defeated 1,481 to 984 at the DAR’s 135th Continental Congress in Washington, D.C., in June, after voting members were handed what Laura McDonald, treasurer of the Martha Laird DAR chapter in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and founder of the Daughters Advocating for Restoration, called a “one-sided legal memo” that insinuated “the DAR does not have a First Amendment Right to define membership eligibility.” The Center for American Liberty previously confirmed that the DAR “would have a strong First Amendment defense” for exclusively admitting women to its ranks.
Storage was quick in her August 6 message to remind DAR members “That decision was made by the representative body authorized under the National Bylaws to act for the National Society. Neither the National Board of Management nor the President General determined the outcome of the vote.”
McDonald told The Federalist in June, however, that the vote was originally supposed to happen at an October special meeting. Instead, the DAR’s National Board of Management “added this as an agenda item for Continental Congress, bypassing the requirement that 100 percent of the membership must be notified about this resolution.”
Storage pretended to address this claim by explaining in her latest letter that notice was given, but acknowledged it was only “by email to voting members of the 135th Continental Congress and by posting on the Members’ Website.”
“Although that consideration occurred as the Special Order of Business rather than at a separately convened special meeting, the representative body was afforded the same opportunity to consider, debate, and decide the proposed resolution as it would have received at the requested special meeting,” Storage insisted. --->READ MORE HERE
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