Seattle Times Columnist Resigns After Paper Scrapped Trans Sports Column

Matt Calkins, a longtime sports columnist, said editors had refused to publish a column about transgender athletes in women’s competitions.

Matt Calkins, a columnist for the sports section of The Seattle Times, said he had resigned this month after editors refused to publish a column he wrote about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.

Mr. Calkins, 44, announced his resignation in a post Thursday on the newsletter platform Substack. He said in an interview with The New York Times that he had arrived at the decision after editors declined to publish a series of “against the grain” columns he wrote, including the one about transgender athletes. In it, he argued that supporting a ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports did not automatically make a person transphobic.