Trump Tries To Roll Back Transgender Rights

The Human Rights Campaign called for the Trump administration not to go forward with a rollback of protections for transgender people…
 
There’s a long list of terrible things that Trump and his administration has done, and now with his latest, he’s coming for the basic core of people’s identity. This is the most drastic move for the administration against transgender people in an attempt to roll back protections and rights established by the Obama administration. The administration attempted to ban transgender people from serving in the military and now it’s considering a very, very narrow definition of gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by the genitalia you had at birth.
 
The Obama administration, which put a policy into place that recognized gender as an individual choice versus the sex assigned at birth, caused an uproar among the usual groups of Conservatives and Evangelical Christians. It also caused many legal issues over bathrooms, single-sex programs and dormitories. Even the NBA got involved: anyone remember North Carolina’s transgender bathroom bill?
 
So what’s happening now? According to the New York Times, which obtained a memo, the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading the effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs. It’s arguing that gender needs to be clearly defined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” That means a definition of male or female and it would be set in stone, forever more and determined by the genitals of the person at their birth. Any disputes would be clarified, according to the memo, by genetic testing.
 
Should this pass, and based on previous actions, there is a chance it will, 1.4 million Americans could be forced to identify as a gender and sex not of their choice. Not to mention the increased risk to their well-being and lives. The Human Rights Campaign tracked the deaths of at least 29 transgender people in the United States due to violence in 2017, making that year the worst for reported deaths. This year so far, 22 people have been killed.