Transgender people, allies protest Trump memo on definition of gender
LGBT activists mobilized a fast and fierce campaign that included a protest outside the White House on Monday to say transgender people cannot be expunged from society, in response to an unreleased Trump administration memo that proposes a strict definition of gender based on a person’s genitalia at birth.
The existence of the draft memo, the administration’s latest effort to roll back the recognition and protection of transgender people under federal civil rights law, was reported by The New York Times on Sunday morning.
Within hours, the hashtag #WontBeErased circulated on social media. By Sunday evening, a rally for transgender rights took place in New York; another took place Monday in Washington.
With the White House as their backdrop, speakers repeated the phrase “We will not be erased,” which has become a rallying cry against the proposal. The 45-minute rally, attended by what appeared to be at least several hundred people, repeatedly referred to the coming midterm elections and encouraged people to vote.
Masen Davis, chief executive of Freedom for All Americans, a bipartisan group that works for nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, told the crowd the memo seemed to be an attempt to “score political points in an election.”
“This is not a red or blue issue, this is a human issue,” he said to cheers and applause.
Jay Brown, a deputy director of the Human Rights Campaign, said there were 10 million LGBTQ voters and “millions” more who were allies.
“We have just three words for you: November is coming,” he said.
The Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government funding, according to the memo obtained by the Times. The new definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable and determined by the genitalia a person is born with. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the department, declined to answer questions about the memo.
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.
“You saw such a massive response because this attack on the trans community is essentially trying to erase the trans community from the face of this country, and we’re not going to stand for that,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and chief executive of GLAAD, an advocacy group for LGBT people.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, “This is a really intrusive policy that doesn’t make any sense scientifically.”
Ms. Keisling said she and her staff woke up Sunday to the news of the memo and quickly planned a response.
“What this feels like to transgender people is trying to make us invisible, trying to say that we don’t exist, trying to say that we are nothing,” she said.