By Our Reporter
The Trump administration is set to scrap “gender identity” in federal law and return to the previous legal definition of sex as synonymous with biological sex.
Such was the definition until the past few years.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said, according to The New York Times, which obtained an official memo, that the government needs to adopt a uniformed definition of gender “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable,” the Times reported.
During the Obama-era were guidelines, issued by the Department of Education, in May, 2016, that directed school administrators in USA to recognize students’ gender identity regardless of the sex indicated in their documents and to enable students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.
The issue persisted even further when the Obama Justice Department issued a Dear Colleague letter threatening to withhold federal dollars from schools and other government-funded institutions unless they opened up their restrooms, changing facilities, and locker rooms on the basis of gender identity instead of sex.
Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, revoked these guidelines almost as soon as she was confirmed.
Trump’s campaign had promised to return Americans to an imaginary past that was both greater and simpler, and reversing gains in transgender rights was consistent with that promise, media reports show.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence,” the Times reported the memo as saying.
In response to the Times’ article, a Health and Human Services spokesperson told media reporters, “We do not comment on alleged leaked documents.”
In his submission regarding this new development, Denny Burk, theology professor at Boyce College said: “Actually, this is simply returning things to where they were before President Obama unilaterally changed the meaning of the word ‘sex’ in federal statutes like Title IX. He never should have done that and had no right to do that.”
“It’s not inhumane or discriminatory to recognize the biological difference between male and female, which is what ‘sex’ refers to in those statutes. This is not radical. What President Obama did was radical and wrong.”
He added that The New York Times piece did not even seem to understand the difference between the terms “sex” and “gender,” where sex refers to biological sex and gender refers to gender identity. The report is thus “a muddle of misinformation,” he said.
“Transgenderism is not a body-affirming ideology. On the contrary, it’s a body-denying ideology. It says that there is something wrong with the body & that the body needs to be reshaped through destructive surgeries and hormone ‘therapies.’ It harms bodies,” he added.
Natasha Chart, board chair of Women’s Liberation Front and member of the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition in USA pointed out in comments emailed to The Christian Post Monday that “gender” is actually the root of the problem.
“Feelings, of any kind, aren’t a sex. Unhappiness isn’t a sex. Liking to dress a certain way isn’t a sex. Gender is what’s trying to be a new definition of sex, and it’s a bad definition, because it has no criteria besides sexist stereotypes that are always able to be disproved by something,” Chart said.
“We don’t live in a world where there are sexed personalities in sexless bodies, but one where minds with any type of personality can be in a body of either sex. If your personality is in a female body, it is a female personality, and the same with a male body. Men and women, girls and boys, can have any type of personality or interest,” she explained.
She added: “Gender pathologizes normal personality variations, by presenting them as being a case of being ‘in the wrong body.’ A body can’t be wrong, as many people have said. We are only alive through our bodies, they cannot be in error without saying that our actual lives are in error. What hatred any of us have for our own bodies, or what harm we do to them, we direct always towards ourselves, the only person who will experience that hatred and harm.”
Activists in the LGBTQ community and those who identify as transgender posted on social media about the fears the memo triggered. Many began using the hashtag “#WontBeErased” in condemning the drafted memo.
Lambda Legal, a national legal organization advocating for LGBTQ rights, wrote, “Transgender folks: You are valid. You matter. You are loved. We will not stop fighting for your rights and you #WontBeErased by this heartless administration. #TransRightsAreHumanRights.”
This not the first time the Trump administration has challenged policies for transgender and nonbinary Americans.
On March 23, President Donald Trump said he would endorse a plan by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter, citing concern over military focus and medical costs.
A U.S. court later ruled the administration could not enforce the updated policy. A court had already ruled that Trump could not enforce his initial proposal of an outright ban, and that decision was appealed to a higher court.
NBC News, The Christian Post and The New York Times contributed to this report.
