According to a new report from the New York Times, the Federal Government is considering narrowing the legal definition of gender to exclude transgender people. This threatens the civil rights of nearly two million people in this country.
This new push goes against precedent covering the legal concept of gender in federal programs, which recognizes gender as an individual’s choice and is not determined by one’s sex assigned at birth. Instead, the federal government is seeking to define gender as a “biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth,” requiring challengers of this definition to undergo genetic testing as a determining factor.
This is unacceptable and could have devastating consequences for transgender and gender non-conforming youth seeking to gain access to runaway and homeless youth and other key federal programs. To be certain: one’s gender identity is a personal declaration of self as either male, female, a blend of both, or neither. How one perceives themselves and what they call themselves is a decisions best made by an individual, no one else.
Over the coming weeks, the True Colors Fund will be working with advocacy groups across the country to educate the public on why we can not allow the identity of transgender people to be erased.
Click here to read the original New York Times Article, and click here to sound off on Twitter.