Hey ESPN, here are some people that ACTUALLY deserve the Courage Award.

ESPN is already well-known for spreading the gay agenda. Reference a seventh-round draft pick that failed to make any 53-man roster and ended up signing with a Canadian Football League team. I would have never known that, except Michael Sam received as much media attention as first round picks. It clearly wasn’t his playing skill. Rather, it was because he is gay.

Sam was given the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at ESPN’s ESPYS award show last year. The award is named in memory of the tennis great who, for all intents and purposes, broke the color barrier in men’s tennis, becoming the first black man to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open as well as the first to play on the American Davis Cup team. He later contracted HIV during a heart transplant and worked to educate others on the disease before dying from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1993.

The award used to mean something substantial. Now it has become the latest weapon in ESPN’s LGBTQ arsenal, as this is the third straight year the award has been given to a LGBTQ individual, though Robin Roberts was deserving of hers for outside reasons.

Just when one thought that the award could not get any more illegitimate than giving it to Michael Sam, once again I stood corrected.

Move aside deserving winners, Caitlyn Jenner is here.

Reality tells us that the newest Courage Award winner is actually Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon. Caitlyn Jenner has never competed in the Olympics. That is because she just emerged on the scene with roars of applause from the political left. There is a worthy petition circulating for Caitlyn Jenner to give back her Olympic medals, since Bruce Jenner won them. Women cannot compete in the men’s decathlon.

Indeed, this shows the sad state of our society, where a man will be celebrated if he claims he is a woman and begins to act like a woman, but someone being consistent in their religious beliefs and scientific reality by believing that a man is a man and not a woman is condemned as hateful. Even new words are created to describe them: “transphobic”. If Bruce Jenner was born with a woman’s soul, surely it is possible for an individual to be born “transphobic”. Sure, there is no evidence to back this up, but me claiming it is provides all the evidence we need. Or does that only work for LGBTQ advocates?

I have already written on this subject, and doubtless will at some point again. I am not here to once more critique the merits of something that is so obviously wrong, apart from religious beliefs. Nor will I go into great detail on how transgenderism derails feminism, as this too has been well-documented. Rather I would like to bring to attention some people who are actually worthy of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, since ESPN is failing to recognize them.

A couple years ago, Abby Bishop was faced with a dilemma. She was a star basketball player in her home country of Australia. But her sister developed a medical condition that made it impossible to properly care for her newborn baby girl.

“It wasn’t about me anymore. Life changed very quickly for me and I guess Zala (her niece) definitely put everything into perspective for me,” she stated.

Bishop chose to take in her niece as a single mother in instead of allowing her to be put in foster care.

“I took her knowing that I could still (play basketball), but I also took her knowing that if I was to never play basketball again, it wouldn't matter to me.”

On top of her demanding basketball schedule, her team was rather uncooperative when it came to taking care of Zala on the road. So just short of the FIBA World Cup, Bishop quit her team, giving up playing on the national team that earned a bronze.

She is back now, playing in the WNBA, and still taking care of her niece.

Three months into his second tour of duty, Noah Galloway lost his left leg and left arm to an IED explosion during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Still struggling with this reality after five years, he became depressed and started to drink and smoke.

One night he decided that the injuries did not have to stop him and made a goal to get back in shape. Galloway began CrossFit training and has participated in various adventure races, such as the Tough Mudder. This is now a lifestyle. He is a personal trainer and motivational speaker, and has appeared on several national talk shows. Recently he has started his own charity that raises money for projects such as Operation Enduring Warrior.

Galloway finished runner-up in the Courage Award voting.

Lawrenceburg High School basketball player Lauren Hill committed to play collegiately at Mount St. Joseph. Soon after, the diagnosis for Diffused Intrinsic Pontine Glioma came. She was given two years at most to live. The disease normally strikes children aged five to eight. This fueled her already “Never give up” attitude to do something for those children and the frustration they felt.

She was determined to still play basketball. The NCAA granted an exemption to move a game up to November, and she was able to fulfill that dream. Even after, she still played three more games in the normally-scheduled season.

She was given until December to live, but lived until April. During that time she raised millions of dollars for cancer research.

"I'm not fighting for me, but for those who follow," she said.

Lauren Hill not only inspired the tri-state but the entire nation. Her loss was felt by many as if they knew her personally.

Being close to home and following the story over its course, this was especially saddening to see. There are few that can embody courage like Lauren Hill did.

A woman who quit basketball, never knowing if she’d return, to take care of her niece. A man who overcame losing two limbs to become a personal trainer, and started a charity. A young woman who took her diagnosis and turned it into something that furthered cancer research and inspired the entire country.

All of these are courageous. Much more courageous than running from one’s sex.

Allow me the liberty. I am not going to directly bash Bruce Jenner and throw petty insults at him. But I will criticize his ideas and the ideas of those that support him. A futile attempt to change one’s sex is not courageous. If anything, it is cowardly. It lacks no merit at all, so it naturally cannot compete with those who show exemplary courage.

This is not even on the same plane. Transgenderism is the z-axis of courageous acts, in that it doesn’t even exist in the realm of courage. It either takes a deeply disturbed person or a deeply coward person to hold the belief that they were born with the wrong sex.

I can live with people that choose – yes choose – to be transgendered. I can even live with the glorification of their choice by liberal media.

But one place that I will draw the line is in calling it more courageous than a woman that gives up her playing career to take care of a child she doesn't have to take care of. Or a soldier that loses two limbs and still pushes on. Or a dying woman fighting with everything she has and making her short life an example and benefit to many.

An athlete that has done nothing in forty years suddenly comes racing to the forefront, snatching away an award from someone whose shoes he is not fit to polish, all because he finally came to terms with the belief that he is a woman. A belief that spits in the face of his anatomy. How sick.

Yes, transgenderism is sick. It is not natural, not normal. It is the sign of a disturbed mind. But much sicker is a society that sees it as THE premier action, unrivaled in its bravery and valor. A society where a demented man is encouraged to castrate himself all to be the poster child of a movement to demonize Christianity when bizarre, unnatural actions are called out. A society that makes the contradictory statement that in order to “be yourself” you have to change yourself. A society where a self-mutilated, silicone-breasted, estrogen-supplemented, hair-extended, castrated man dressed like a woman and airbrushed for a magazine cover is considered real and authentic. And courageous. Obviously remaking oneself into something one is not is far more courageous than a young woman that went through a rare cancer, worked to still be able to play basketball, told a nation to never give up on dreams, and raised millions for children’s cancer research. I guess I need to reevaluate courage.

Or perhaps society does.

Holding a belief that one is the other sex then hiding behind LGBTQ advocates is an act of cowardice.

Abby Bishop, Noah Galloway, and Lauren Hill are prime examples of courage.

But not according to ESPN.