For years, young girls have been forced to advocate for female-only sports and spaces—both of which should be a basic right—because of radical gender ideology. Where too many adults have failed them, middle and high schoolers have had to make their voices heard. 

But in Maine, fathers are stepping up to defend their daughters. 

“Paternal not political” is the motto of Maine Girl Dads, and the group’s mission is to protect young women in the state by ensuring they have the right to fair play, equal protection under the law, and safe single-sex places.

“We’re making the kids themselves that are victims of this issue stand up and be the ones to speak, and that’s really terrible,” Leyland Streiff, who leads the Maine Girl Dads petition, told IW Features. “As parents, we shouldn’t be doing that.”

Streiff said he was initially inspired to speak out when he heard Riley Gaines call for fathers to do right by their daughters.

“My feeling is most dads … see themselves as protectors and providers. One of their main responsibilities is to protect their families, and in this case, their daughters,” Josh Tabor, a father of four daughters, public educator, school board member, and former principal, told IW Features. “I do not want my 15-year-old daughter to have to stand up in front of a bunch of people to advocate what is reasonable and common sense. That’s my job.”

Heidi Sampson, a former Maine state representative who served on the state board of education, said Maine Girl Dads, which she helped launch alongside an engaged group of fathers, is filling a void that’s been eating away at society for too long. 

“Dads have been silenced for many years,” she explained. 

Maine Girl Dads has decided to change that—starting in its home state. 

As Streiff explained, current Maine law fails girls and women. Since 2021, the Maine Human Rights Act has included “gender identity” as a protected class, granting men who identify as women legal protection to enter female spaces and compete in female athletics. As a result, girls in the state have been forced to compete against males who have taken opportunities and titles intended for female athletes, as IW Features has previously highlighted.

This policy also puts the state in conflict with the Trump administration’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order that clarified Title IX’s position on “gender identity.” In April, the Trump administration sued the state of Maine over these alleged Title IX violations.

While the federal government’s legal proceedings are ongoing, the Maine legislature doubled down in July by rejecting a bill that would have protected women’s spaces and sports.

Maine Girl Dads hopes to put the issue directly before voters. Their ballot initiative would recognize sex-based definitions for athletic categories and private spaces such as locker rooms or bathrooms. To put the measure on the November 2026 ballot, Maine Girl Dads needs to collect 70,000 signatures.

But for fathers like Streiff and Tabor, the legislation is more than mere words on a page—it’s protection against the invasion of privacy that some of their own daughters have experienced.

“A boy walked in on my [15-year-old] daughter’s restroom [in Michigan],” Tabor told IW Features. His daughter was so uncomfortable that she had to leave the bathroom, Tabor said. Now, Tabor said his daughter avoids using the bathroom at school because she does not want to share a private space with a male. 

Tabor’s daughter and other children attend school in Michigan with their mother, but he said he is fighting for change in Maine in the hopes that Maine Girl Dads’ advocacy will inspire other parents across the country to follow suit. Uniting fathers across the state, Maine Girl Dads launched their petition in March with a rally on the steps of the state capitol building in Augusta.

“Chloe Cole came and joined us and spoke about this issue and helped rally hundreds of people that came, dads and advocates alike,” Streiff said.

After collecting signatures on Maine’s recent election day, Streiff told IW Features there is already incredible momentum.

“We had over 53,000 signatures in only one day across the state, which is massive—especially for the state of Maine, a place where we only have about 1.4 million residents of the state,” he said.

Streiff and Tabor also heard stories from women and girls personally impacted by Maine’s current laws. One girl said her lacrosse team lost two games last year to schools with males on their teams, according to Streiff, and one college student told Streiff that she is forced to share a locker room with six-foot-tall, fully intact males.

“I can’t tell you the number of dads [who] said, ‘Thank God, someone’s doing something about this,’” Tabor said.

Concerned citizens of all stripes have signed Maine Girl Dads’ petition, and Tabor emphasized the passion mothers have had for the issue, too.

“Moms care just as much about this as dads do,” Tabor said.

“This is an 80/20 issue across the country, and it continues to be an 80/20 issue in Maine,” Streiff said. “Over 60% of Democrats that have been polled in Maine agree that males and females should be separated in sports and sports facilities, and it’s about 90% of Republicans, from what I understand.”

Nevertheless, Maine Girl Dads’ work hasn’t been without objection. Common concerns include whether their legislation would exclude trans-identified students from athletics or create arduous criteria for identifying a person’s sex, according to Streiff.

Addressing these concerns, Streiff pointed out that the proposed bill would allow for all students to be included on a sports team: girls would have their own teams, boys would have their teams, and where there are no girls’ teams, females would be allowed to join the boys’ team.

“There is no situation ever in which somebody is going to be banned from playing sports or unable to play sports,” Streiff explained. “They would continue to be able to play sports the way that it happened for decades.”

As for the second objection he’s received, Streiff said that birth certificates can easily be used to verify an individual’s sex.

“We’ve overcomplicated things where we think this is some new concept [to] have sports distinguished by sex,” Streiff said. “This is since competitive sports have existed since Title IX in the 1970s—all we’re asking is to do the same thing.”

Beyond these general concerns, Tabor and Streiff said that they have received some vocal backlash while collecting signatures.

Streiff recounted one instance where an angry passerby shouted that he should “go home” and called him a “f***ing Nazi”—all while Streiff’s 12-year-old daughter stood next to him.

However, the response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive overall, according to Tabor and Streiff.

People with common sense views on this issue have been disenfranchised, threatened, bullied, and silenced, Sampson told IW Features, but now, these fathers, mothers, and ordinary people are speaking out.

“I’ve seen there is massive excitement, and honestly massive relief, that we’re doing this,” Streiff told IW Features.

“The few negative gestures that we got pale in comparison to the number of people who were truly grateful and relieved that someone was doing something,” Tabor echoed.

For the Maine Girl Dads, the hateful comments are not a surprise given how contentious discussion about gender ideology has become. But Streiff, Tabor, and their coalition of fathers are ready to fight for their daughters.

“All we want is the ability to be fathers for our kids and to be able to have common sense reign when it comes to how we protect them,” Streiff said.