New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed a bill into law that adds a third gender option to new birth certificates in the Left’s latest attempt to cater to the LGBTQ community in defiance of scientific evidence that “gender identity” is not separate from biological sex.
The Daily Wire reports that the bill will immediately allow individuals who describe themselves as “gender non-binary” to apply for new birth certificates in which they can list their gender as “X” as opposed to “M” for male and “F” for female. For parents of newborns, the bill allows them to select a “third gender option” if they choose to raise their babies genderless.
The bill was signed one week after Mayor de Blasio held a public hearing on the proposal for the new birth certificates. The measure was passed by a 41-6 City Council vote last month.
“The LGBTQ rights movement was born in NYC,” de Blasio tweeted on October 9. “Today, we’re making history again in the fight for dignity and respect.”
Speaker Corey Johnson reiterated de Blasio’s sentiments.
“Today is a landmark day for our city,” said Johnson. “New York is sending a clear message to people who are transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary that we are here for you. This law will help those friends, neighbors and colleagues better self-identify on their birth certificates, a document that’s so important in everyday life.”
CBS New York notes that New York City residents were able to change their gender on birth certificates issued since 2014, but that only applied to individuals who had undergone “gender reassigntment surgery.” In order to change the gender on the birth certificates, the individuals were required to present a “letter from a physician or an affidavit by a licensed health care provider” indicating that the surgery had taken place. The new law changes this policy by eliminating the requirement for a doctor’s note.
“New Yorkers should be free to tell their government who they are, not the other way around,” de Blasio said at a press conference Wednesday morning. “This new legislation will empower all New Yorkers — especially our transgender and gender non-binary residents — to have birth certificates that better reflect their identity, and it furthers the city’s commitment to defending the rights of our LGBTQ community.”
Mayor de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, assured New Yorkers that the birth-certificate law was just one of many steps to be taken to affirm the rights of the LGBTQ community.
“For the first time, all New Yorkers will be able to get a birth certificate that reflects and affirms their lived reality,” said McCray. “We will not stop there — we strive to extend that dignity to every aspect of life. We will stand strong against any attempt to deny members of the LGBTQ community the respect or safety they deserve as fellow human beings.”
But while the rhetoric behind such political moves focuses on “dignity” and “respect” for individuals who have labeled themselves transgender, scientists contend that efforts to normalize transgenderism are doing more harm than good, as they draw attention away from the underlying mental health problems behind transgenderism and therefore direct these individuals away from valuable treatment options and toward interventions that have proven to be psychologically harmful.
A report in The New Atlantis journal co-authored by former Chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Dr. Paul McHugh and Arizona State University Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics Lawrence Mayer finds that transgenderism is not supported by science and that “gender identity” is not separate from biological sex.
“Examining research from the biological, psychological, and social sciences, this report shows that some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence,” an editor’s note for the report stated.
“The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” stated the researchers.
According to that report, enabling acceptance of transgenderism through medical intervention is particularly harmful. The authors observe that adults who choose to have sex-reassignment surgeries have “a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes.” They cite a study that found that sex-“reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.”
The report outlined concerns on the impact of acceptance of transgenderism for children and young adults in particular.
“There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents, although some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification,” wrote the researchers. “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”
These sentiments are similar to those found in a position statement released by the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) on March 21 entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” in which the writers observed that any policies that foster the belief that gender dysphoria is anything beyond a psychological problem are in fact harmful. The authors of that position statement made several scientific observations, including that human sexuality “is an objective biological binary trait.” Children who use hormones to attempt to mimic a sex that is not their own have a number of dangerous physical and mental risks, the position statement advised, adding that “conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful” can be classified as child abuse.
Unfortunately, lawmakers such as Bill de Blasio are more interested in satisfying the demands of activists than addressing the needs of a troubled community.
Photo: AP Images
