U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton had a moment of clarity after the 2024 election.
He admitted parents do not want their daughters facing male athletes. He said Democrats had become too afraid to speak about hard facts.
That was 21 months ago.
This week, with a Democratic Senate primary nearing, Moulton apologized to transgender-identifying voters. He then refused to say whether his old concern about his daughters still stood.
That is a cave.
Every child deserves care and respect. Girls also deserve their own fair sports teams. Kindness toward one student cannot require another student to lose a title or risk an injury.
Moulton has had plenty of time to turn his concern into a policy.
In January 2025, he voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. He said he backed some limits, but thought that bill reached too far.
He made the same case two months later.
Moulton never named an age cutoff or wrote an eligibility rule. He never filed his own bill. His office ignored a request for comment from NewBostonPost around that time asking if he would file legislation and what, exactly, he supported.
He chose talk over action.
Massachusetts girls kept paying the price.
The state has two paths for putting male athletes on girls’ teams.
The first is the gender identity policy. It lets a male student who identifies as a girl join a girls’ team.
An older rule also lets an ordinary boy join a girls’ team when his school does not offer the same sport for boys. Those cases do not involve transgender identity, and we live in the only state where that happens regularly.
Either way, girls must compete against a male athlete.
The results are no longer hard to find, especially if you read NewBostonPost.
A male transgender athlete helped Brookline win the 2023 Division 1 girls indoor track state title. The athlete placed fourth in the 55-meter hurdles and scored five team points.
Additionally, a male transgender athlete helped the Foxboro High girls' basketball team win back-to-back state titles in 2023 and 2024.
At KIPP Academy Lynn, male transgender athlete Lazuli Clark played girls basketball. Clark also set two track meet records and earned a girls volleyball league all-star honor.
In February 2024, Collegiate Charter School of Lowell ended a girls basketball game against KIPP at halftime. Three Collegiate players had been hurt. Two injuries happened on plays involving Clark.
A male transgender athlete at Winchester played girls lacrosse after helping the girls cross-country team win a sectional title. NewBostonPost has found male transgender athletes earning girls league honors in lacrosse, cross-country and volleyball. In girls' volleyball, one even won back-to-back league MVPs in 2023 and 2024.
Chelsea runner Lilly Serrano placed third in the girls 200 meters at the 2026 Division 4 state meet. Serrano later finished eighth at the all-state meet and received a girls league all-star honor.
The separate rule for ordinary boys has also changed state titles.
In 2024, Ryan Crook scored both goals as Somerset Berkley won the Division 2 girls field hockey state championship.
The team repeated in 2025. Crook also won the South Coast Conference girls field hockey MVP award for the second straight year.
And his brother, Lucas, and another boy, Alex Millar, helped Somerset Berkley win state titles in 2018 and 2019. Lucas was also a South Coast Conference MVP; he's also the leading scorer in team history.
Two boys helped Oliver Ames win a girls volleyball state title in 2025. A boy also helped South Shore Tech win one last year – and Shawsheen Tech the year before that.
Boys have won 11 individual girls gymnastics state titles in Massachusetts during the past decade.
A boy at Norwell became a three-time girls' volleyball league all-star. He also finished second in league MVP voting. Everett field hockey has had multiple boys named Greater Boston League MVPs. And a former boys soccer all-star later helped Carver’s girls team reach a state semifinal.
Boys take roster spots in girls swimming as well. A Milton team competing in the girls division carried 10 boys during the 2023 season. Boys have been league all-stars and hold school records at Milton High.
Safety concerns are also real.
During a 2023 field hockey playoff game, a shot from a male Swampscott player struck a Dighton-Rehoboth girl in the face. She went to the hospital with facial and dental injuries.
No one needs to accuse the male player of wanting to hurt her. The adults wrote the rule. The adults bear the duty to fix it.
Massachusetts voters understand the issue.
A University of New Hampshire poll in March 2025 found 63% of state residents opposed letting transgender female athletes who were male at birth compete in women’s sports. Only 27% supported it.
The numbers changed among registered Democrats. Fifty-one percent supported the policy while 41% opposed it.
That split tells us why Moulton changed his tone.
He trailed Ed Markey 41% to 35% in a June 2026 UNH poll. Markey also won 73% of the vote at the state Democratic convention.
Moulton needs the party’s left wing on Sept. 1. Those voters have made transgender policy a test of loyalty.
So Moulton bowed to the loudest group in the room.
He could have used the past 21 months to produce one page of clear rules. He could have spoken with care while defending girls. He did neither.
Parents should not be shamed for seeing what is in front of them. Sex matters in sports. State titles matter to the girls who train for them. Safety matters every time a student steps onto a field or court.
Moulton wants voters to give him a six-year Senate term. His record on this issue offers a warning.
He doesn't offer fresh ideas, and when the crowd became hostile, he left girls without an answer.
