“The cruelty and bigotry of this administration truly has no limit.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-21-2018

LGBTQ Americans and allies rally outside the White House to protest President Donald Trump’s effort to ban trans people from military service. (Photo: Ted Eytan/Flickr/cc)

Sparking immediate outrage among LGBTQ Americans and allies on Sunday, the New York Times reported on a memo revealing that “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.”

In a move that “would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves—surgically or otherwise—as a gender other than the one they were born into,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is currently considering a legal definition that “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with,” according to the Times. Continue reading →