Outcome of presidential memo to redefine gender
What would it feel like to have your very existence denied? What would it feel like to have your own country’s administration say your identity is “wrong?” How would you maintain hope that it would get better?
These questions pose an unsettling reality for many Americans in the LGBTQ community since the Trump administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services came out with an official stance saying that gender will be defined by whatever the individual is at birth.
The agency is preparing a memo that will be distributed throughout the administration that defines “sex” under Title IX, the civil rights law against gender discrimination in education as the memo also states that the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate will serve as definitive proof of gender. Basically, to the Trump administration, gender is dictated by a piece of paper.
For a while now, President Donald Trump and his policymakers have been openly discriminatory towards transgender or non-binary individuals.
In March, the Trump administration announced its plan to ban transgender people from the military. In May, the Department of Justice adopted an illegal policy that housed transgender people in prison according to the gender they were assigned at birth.
Last year, the Department of Justice allowed businesses to openly discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community, so long as the business owners could cite religious reasons for their discriminatory behavior.
Since taking office, President Trump has been an enemy to the LGBTQ community instead of an ally and this offensive and politically incorrect memo could have been a deadly strike against these Americans. But it won’t be.
It won’t be because President Trump and his administration are taking this stance alone. The rest of America refuses to ignore the transgender and non-binary population.
In 2017, the Public Religion Research Institute conducted research on American attitudes toward the LGBTQ community. Seven out 10 Americans support laws that protect the rights of LGBTQ people and 53 percent of Americans oppose laws that would require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth rather than their current gender identity.
Transgender people are not only supported by their country, but they are also elected to office by their country.
In 2017, eight transgender candidates were elected to office, the most ever in American history. This year 40 transgender candidates are running for various levels of government, which is further evidence of a necessary progress in our democracy.
People who have been neglected and ignored by our government are now prominent members of the very same government.
Transgender people now have unprecedented representation in our country’s political system and have an extraordinary opportunity to enact positive change for the LGBTQ community and the rest of the country.
Trump may think that he has silenced transgenders with his discriminatory memo, but in reality he has caused them and the rest of America to use our collective voice.
To the transgender members of our community: we see you, we hear you and we support you.