Florida LGBT group plotting ‘Day of Resistance’
One day after a Trump administration memo argued to define gender as a biological condition determined at birth, one LGBT advocacy group said Monday they’re plotting protests across South Florida this weekend.
Called “Day of Resistance,” the coordinated rallies set for Saturday, Oct. 27, aim to dispute a Department of Health and Human Services letter that would redefine federal recognition of some 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one in which they were born.
Times and locations for the protests are still in the works, said Gena Duncan, the transgender inclusion director of Equality Florida, a St. Petersburg-based group promoting LGBT rights. Duncan said the protests would also take place simultaneously in cities such as Jacksonville, Orlando and Tallahassee.
“This is another attempt by the Trump administration to turn back the clock and roll back rights for the transgender community,” Duncan said. “This administration has been attacking the trans community since it came into office. This is greatly alarming.”
On Sunday, the New York Times obtained a draft memo from the federal department that redefines sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that now blocks discrimination against education programs that get government financial assistance.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the draft memo reads. “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.”
If adopted under federal law, a narrowed definition of “transgender” could erode Obama-era federal court rulings about gender identity, and possibly throw into upheaval about 40 ordinances protecting trans rights in Florida, said Morgan Mayfaire, Equality Florida’s Miami-Dade liaison.
“It just takes us backwards and reverts us back to a standard that’s not only confusing, but unenforceable,” Mayfaire said. “Say you have a [transgender] senior in high school. If they were defined by their sex at birth, how do you qualify that now? Would you ask the student to show their genitals as proof? Do you invalidate the person they’ve been their entire lives? There’s a great deal of fear.”
Within hours of the story publication Sunday morning, LGBT activists mobilized in protest, staging rallies outside the White House on Monday. Meanwhile, transgender people took to social media under the hashtag #WontBeErased.
On Monday morning, Equality Florida along with South Florida advocates, including Mayfaire, delivered 3,000 protest letters to the office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott, calling on him to “keep his promise to enact LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections for state employees.” In 2016, after the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Gov. Scott pledged to bar discrimination against LGBT Floridians.