A move by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles could present a long-awaited test case on transgender identity. The Department is reportedly moving to bar people from listing their transgender identity for their gender on Florida driver’s licenses. The rule could be challenged and force a court to rule on the constitutional protections afforded to sexual identity.
Robert Kynoch, deputy executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, reportedly announced that the Department will repeal a clause in the Driver License Operations Manual that allowed people to list a gender of their choosing on their licenses.
The Department will maintain that it does not have the authority to allow a gender identity other than their biological gender. He explained that “gender” under state law “does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role or identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”
He further stated that “[p]ermitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”
That could create a conflict with any local and state laws allowing a change on birth certificates.
In the United Kingdom, legislators are facing an analogous issue. Labor Party MP Charlotte Nichols has called for the Parliament to amend the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 to allow posthumous changes to gender. In other words, instead of changing driver’s licenses, they would change death certificates.
The impetus for the legislation was the death of Brianno Ghey, a transgender person murdered in a suspected hate crime. Ghey was also a social media influencer.
The Florida policy is likely to be challenged. Even if challenged under state law, it is likely to raise the question of the constitutional protections that must be accorded gender identity. If so, it has the makings of a case with broader implications.
DNA don’t lie.
They say at the nadir of the Roman Empire, “Emperors such as Tiberius kept groups of young boys for his pleasure, [incestuous] Nero … had a male slave castrated so he could take him as his wife, Elagabalus … force[d] a Vestal Virgin into marriage, [and] Commodus, who [maintained] harems of concubines, … enraged Romans by sitting in the theatre dressed in a woman’s garments.”
Yes, history is a swirling drain of excrement permitted by good men who are cowled by misguided shame and guilt for their actions by bad men.
SURRENDER, ACQUIESCENCE, AND SUBMISSION TO THE ENEMY
The milquetoast liberal/progressive/socialist/democrat/RINO/AINO “American” way.
NOT!
There are and there will ever be ONLY TWO genders of homo sapiens sapiens.
The rest are phantasm, prevarication, equivocation, obfuscation, propaganda, indoctrination, tools of mind control, and flat out BULL —-!
That a person undergoes surgery DOES NOT alter his gender.
A “transgender” person is a pseudo person, a fraudulent non-entity.
A person is only born once with one gender.
Enough convoluted irrational delirium.
Affirmative action is unconstitutional and must be rescinded and withdrawn in toto.
The right to vote must be rescinded and withdrawn from the hysterical and incoherent dependents, leeches, parasites, illegal alien invaders, and women.
Turley’s analysis is confused – because the left has incorporated chaos and confusion into everything – but in this case specifically the law.
First I do not care how you define gender or sex or any of the rest of this.
If it is not a concrete objectively definable attribute – it does NOT belong in the law or on your drivers license.
The social contract is a ying/yang – chaos and order. Government is the order side. Individuals are the chaos side.
The purpose of government is to impose just enough order that we do not kill each other and can thrive.
As Reagan expressed in “A time for choosing” the maximum individual liberty consistent with public order.
You are free to identify yourself however you want. You can say you are a fish, that you are 9ft tall and way 4oz.
But you can not obligate others to identify you as you wish. That premise that there is is absurd.
No one has the right to control the speech of others.
With respect to government records – like Drivers licenses:
The purpose of a government record is NOT to reflect your view of yourself.
But to accurately describe you.
Drivers licenses list the color of your hair – not what you most recently died it to.
They list your eye color – not the color of the contacts you are currently wearing.
They list your height – not how tall or short you feel.
They list your weight, not how light or heavy you feel.
The purpose of a drivers license is to identify you to others – NOT to describe you as you wish to be described without
any connection to reality.
If you wish to claim that gender is fluid and subjectively maleable – if we accept that as true – then it does nto belong on your drivers license.
But the chromosomes you were born with is even less fluid than your eye or hair color.
You can choose chaos in your own life.
You can not force chaos into government.
Government is the order part of the ying/yang of life.
Anything that is not about order has no place in government.
This is also why government must be limited – because we should not infringe on freedom by imposing order where we do not need to.
John Very interesting your points of view and comparative points for an identity document based on its purpose.
Imagine the scandal it would be if the police had to ask you to show your genitals at a traffic stop to verify that you are the driver you say you are on your driver’s license.