Service organization Daughters of the American Revolution is facing calls from its own members to stop allowing transgender women to become members.
According to the New Tolerance Campaign, a petition website, some 500 current and former members have sent 3,000 messages regarding DAR’s change to its bylaws from last year. Members voted on changing the ruling document for the organization to clarify it could not “unlawfully discriminate against an eligible applicant … for any characteristic protected by applicable law,” which opened the door for transgender members. Every member must still prove lineage to a patriot of the American Civil War.
During DAR’s annual Continental Congress last year, President General Pamela Edwards Rouse Wright acknowledged that before the vote, transgender members had already been allowed. This flew in the face of the group’s history, as it came to be because women weren’t allowed in the Sons of the American Revolution. Former chapter executive board member Brenda Becker spoke out against the change.
“With this bylaw change, DAR can no longer be said to stand for ‘Daughters of the American Revolution,’ but mere ‘Descendants of the American Revolution’ instead,” Becker said in a statement. “The hundreds of women who voiced their concerns via this campaign and the hundreds more who resigned following the surreptitious passage of this policy have a clear message for DAR national leadership: radical gender ideology has no place in this historic institution.”
“The Daughters of the American Revolution had to fight for a lot. Who knew they now have to fight for what it means to be a daughter,” Independent Women’s Law Center Director May Mailman said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “For the Daughters of the American Revolution that reason was, in large part, female association. What a shame to give that all up for men.”
However, DAR reiterated to the Washington Examiner that the bylaws, which passed overwhelmingly, “did not change DAR membership requirements; they updated non-discrimination policy language.”
“DAR does not have any bylaw related to transgender members and there has been no change to membership eligibility,” the organization said in a statement.
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Becker has since started her own organization online called “Biological Daughters,” which has encouraged 13 DAR chapters of others disgruntled with the tradition that began in 1890 to unite against the bylaw.
DAR boasts over 190,000 members across 3,000 chapters worldwide. Its next Continental Congress is scheduled to take place in June.
