The conflict began a few years ago when some local DAR chapters admitted biological men who identify as women.
The national organization subsequently passed a non-discrimination measure, effectively preventing local chapters from restricting membership solely to biological women. Several chapters demanded a vote to amend the bylaws to explicitly define "woman" biologically.
Tyler O'Neil, author and investigative reporter, spoke about this on American Family Radio (AFR)'s "Jenna Ellis in the Morning" program. He says DAR leadership manipulated the process at the annual convention by distributing memos claiming the amendment would be illegal and by pausing the process when it appeared the resolution might pass.
"From the beginning, you had a system where it looked as though they were avoiding a fair vote," says O'Neil. "They were tilting the playing field ahead of time."
He adds that DAR was founded because the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) excluded women, making the current push for biological men to join the DAR particularly ironic.
There is legislation in Congress to ensure that DAR's membership is limited to women.
Rep. Ben Cline (R-Virginia) is the author of the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act. According to Cline, DAR has a longstanding tradition of celebrating and empowering women who represent the exceptional heritage of the birth of our nation.
"However, as we celebrate America's 250th birthday, the organization has now abandoned the very principles on which it was founded," said Cline. "Rather than honoring and preserving a lineage-based organization for women, it has embraced radical gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve."
Cline added that this DAR law is "common-sense legislation" that requires the congressionally chartered DAR to return to serving the "true daughters of the American Revolution."
Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, supports the legislation, as well as Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel at Independent Women, and Terry Schilling, president of American Principles Project.
O'Neil says that a return to a biblical understanding of human identity — specifically male and female — would resolve many modern social issues.
"If we had a proper understanding of that, that would solve abortion, that would solve same-sex marriage, that would solve the transgender debate," says O'Neil. "It answers so much."
