Columnist resigns after transgender sports story was spiked

A former sports columnist at the Seattle Times said he resigned after the outlet refused to run his story regarding opposition to transgender athletes.

Matt Calkins wrote an article about the decision on his Substack and an X post revealing the news, which has garnered over 3 million views and 40,000 likes.

"The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males," Calkins wrote on X.

"It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist," he added.

Calkins was a sports columnist at the Times for 11 years, adding he had "no animosity toward anyone who works there."

"It kind of sounds like a rage-quit move if I was just talking to a random person, but it's something that I've been thinking about for a while just because I felt like I couldn't quite do my job as a sports columnist if I was restricted on a lot of these topics," Calkins told "Katie Pavlich Tonight."

"I think two things can be true at once. We can be compassionate towards people who might feel trapped in the wrong body or confused, and that's kind of a growing issue in the country. But also understand that biological males have a distinct competitive advantage, and there's a reason that we separate males and females in sports in the first place. I think it's pretty common sense," Calkins added.

When asked about Calkins's resignation, the Times told NewsNation partner The Hill that it does "not comment on personnel matters."

NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.