JBG
12-06-2006, 10:15 PM
Incredible but true!!! New York City Health Department was studying, and about to allow, people to alter their genders on their birth certificates (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/nyregion/06gender.html?ex=1166158800&en=7dacd2511e558a28&ei=5070&emc=eta1) (link). The New York Times article, excerpted below,details this near-miss. Imagine the dollars spent, while New York City and New York State have recently recommended a vast array of hospital closures to save money?
I'm not necessarily against closures, but this is insane!!!
New York City’s Board of Health unexpectedly withdrew a proposal yesterday that would have allowed people to alter the sex on their birth certificates without sex-change surgery.
The plan, if passed, would have put New York at the forefront of a movement to eliminate anatomical considerations when defining gender. It had been lauded by some mental health professionals and transgender advocates who said it would reduce discrimination against men and women who lived as members of the opposite sex.
But after the proposed change was widely publicized recently, board members and officials with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said that a surge of new concerns arose. Vital records experts said that new federal rules regarding identification documents, due next year, could have forced the policy to be scrapped.
Health officials said patients at hospitals asked how doctors would determine who would be assigned to the bed next to them. And among law enforcement officials, there were concerns about whether prisoners with altered birth certificates could be housed with female prisoners — even if they still had male anatomies.
“This is something we hadn’t fully thought through, frankly,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “What the birth certificate shows does have implications beyond just what the birth certificate shows.”
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However, transgender advocates accused the city of bowing to pressure from institutions and residents who feared interacting too closely with men who live as women and women who live as men. They noted that the city would have required doctors to verify that the gender change was permanent.
“I fear that because of the public attention the proposed change had attracted, they lacked the courage to give the proposed amendment the consideration it deserved,” said Shannon Minter, a board member and lawyer for Transgender Law and Policy Institute in New York. “That’s very disappointing.”
I'm not necessarily against closures, but this is insane!!!
New York City’s Board of Health unexpectedly withdrew a proposal yesterday that would have allowed people to alter the sex on their birth certificates without sex-change surgery.
The plan, if passed, would have put New York at the forefront of a movement to eliminate anatomical considerations when defining gender. It had been lauded by some mental health professionals and transgender advocates who said it would reduce discrimination against men and women who lived as members of the opposite sex.
But after the proposed change was widely publicized recently, board members and officials with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said that a surge of new concerns arose. Vital records experts said that new federal rules regarding identification documents, due next year, could have forced the policy to be scrapped.
Health officials said patients at hospitals asked how doctors would determine who would be assigned to the bed next to them. And among law enforcement officials, there were concerns about whether prisoners with altered birth certificates could be housed with female prisoners — even if they still had male anatomies.
“This is something we hadn’t fully thought through, frankly,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “What the birth certificate shows does have implications beyond just what the birth certificate shows.”
******
However, transgender advocates accused the city of bowing to pressure from institutions and residents who feared interacting too closely with men who live as women and women who live as men. They noted that the city would have required doctors to verify that the gender change was permanent.
“I fear that because of the public attention the proposed change had attracted, they lacked the courage to give the proposed amendment the consideration it deserved,” said Shannon Minter, a board member and lawyer for Transgender Law and Policy Institute in New York. “That’s very disappointing.”