RILEY GAINES: Georgia voters must reject Jon Ossoff's awful record against women

When it has mattered most, Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff has abandoned women and girls every single time.

In March 2024, he voted to kill an amendment that would have withheld federal funds from schools and states that allow men to compete in women's programs.

Three chances to stand with women. Three times he refused.

But it doesn't stop there. Sen. Ossoff is also pushing to override Georgia's state-level protections by repeatedly backing the federal Equality Act. He co-sponsored it in 2021 and 2023 and campaigned on it in 2020. The bill would redefine sex to include gender identity across federal civil rights law, with no carveout for sports. Legal experts and elite female athletes - many of them not conservatives - have warned exactly what that means: co-ed competition, lost opportunities, and compromised safety.

Ossoff's record goes far beyond the playing field. He's supported legislation that would force access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms based on gender identity. Translation: He supports policies that would require your daughter to undress in a locker room with a man. No regard for privacy. No regard for safety.

He supports policies that tell women-including survivors of sexual assault-that their discomfort and fear don't matter, that male feelings matter more than a woman's physical safety. 

Religious freedom isn't safe either. Sen. Ossoff introduced a bill to override the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, forcing Christian hospitals in Georgia to perform transgender surgeries against their deeply held beliefs. 

Some say fairness can be preserved with hormone rules or case-by-case exceptions. It cannot.

I lived the reality. Women are asked to be quiet, to disregard our gut instinct when it tells us it's wrong to nonconsensually undress next to a man in a locker room, to surrender records and roster spots to maintain someone else's feelings. Title IX was never meant to make women invisible to solve a controversy. It was meant to ensure that we count.