PR Buzz: What Makes a Lady?

The headline reads: “Transgender woman sues LPGA for ‘female at birth’ rule”

Say what??????

Here’s the deal: The LPGA, the women’s professional golf tour, apparently has ruled that to be eligible to play on their circuit, you must have been born a female.

If someone undergoes gender reassignment surgery, they are doing just about everything possible to give up their previous identity.  In fact, scientific advances may allow for child-bearing in transgendered male-to-females.  Wild, right?

Back to golf.

The issue at hand is civil rights.  Did the LPGA violate civil rights by prohibiting transgenders from playing on Tour?  Kind of a loaded question.  Does undergoing a gender reassignment switch your past genetics?

Said better: does changing your gender legally erase your original gender?

That seems like a really serious topic for a sports organization to be faced with.

So the LPGA stands between a rock and a hard place: their Tour was created to give a competitive golf experience to women…how do they handle excluding someone who is legally a woman under the United States government?

Let me turn this one over to smart people like you.  How should the LGPA respond from a PR capacity?