Finally. HHS moves to reestablish a scientific definition of sex and gender

I’ve been calling for a case where this question is taken before the courts for years now and we might finally have the mechanism to make it happen. With the federal government under the Obama administration having caved to the demands of social justice warriors on the issue of transgenderism and rights, the door was opened to massive confusion in schools and most other areas of daily life. Some clarification and recognition of fundamental science and medical facts has been sorely needed and now we may be getting it. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may be close to issuing a revised, legal definition of sex under Title IX. And this, of course, immediately had the staff at the New York Times setting their collective hair on fire.

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The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of sex in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing sex largely as an individual’s choice — and prompting fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

I only focus on the New York Times here because I first learned of this welcome news via a frantic tweet from the Gray Lady’s Deputy Washington Editor, Jonathan Weisman.

Whoa, a WOW story — the Trump Admin has a new definition of sex that would render 1.4 million transgendered people legally nonexistent: sex is “a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.”

– Jonathan Weisman, Deputy Washington Editor for The New York Times

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Aside from properly identifying who is in the White House right now, there’s virtually nothing in that tweet which is correct, making it all the more remarkable. Notice how Weisman claims that this is “a new definition of sex,” when talking about the definition of sex that’s been in use for all of recorded history until the recent cultist movement convinced the previous administration to begin muddying the waters. Also, nobody becomes “legally nonexistent” if their ID correctly reflects their gender.

But let’s look at this “new definition” which has Weisman rending his garments on the public square. According to the draft of the HHS memo, the government would need to “adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” No wonder the New York Times is so upset! Good Lord, you wouldn’t want the government using concepts that are grounded in objective, biological science, would you? What’s next? Believing in gravity?

I sincerly hope HHS sees this through and an open debate on the subject is invited. I would dearly love to see one of these expert transgender activists step up and answer a single question. Can you name another instance – just one, single instance – where provable, established science has been overruled by both the government and even politically charged members of the scientific community based on nothing beyond what a person tells you they sincerely believe?

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We have people running around who honestly and sincerely believe that they are werewolves, zombies, controlled by demons or under constant surveillance by the government. (Okay. To be fair, that last group might have a point.) But we don’t go around encouraging those people to believe such things or try to order the rest of the country to treat them like werewolves, zombies or demon seed.

Just as has been understood for as long as man has been trying to figure out the science of biology, human beings – like virtually every other animal on the planet – are divided into two genders, both of which are required for procreating the species. Yes, there are a vanishing small number of people who are born with genetic anomalies affecting their 23rd chromosomal pair (intersex individuals) and they both require and deserve special accommodations in these matters. But everyone else is male or female. People who sincerely believe they are not their biological gender are, as the American College of Pediatricians has noted, displaying at best a sign of confused thinking, or worse, that an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind, not the body, and it should be treated as such.

I’m not saying (and I hope HHS is not saying) that you can’t call yourself whatever you like, dress how you prefer or refer to yourself with whatever pronoun you wish. But that doesn’t give you the right to regulate the speech and behavior of everyone else to match your belief. Nor does it mean that you can violate the privacy rights of others. And the government should not be in the business of supporting such concepts.

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It’s time to have this debate in the appropriate venue, allow it to be challenged in the courts and find out if our government has truly become so politically correct that they will abandon basic science and common decency in the name of satisfying the social justice mobs.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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