LGBTQ Groups Announce Protests In Response To Trump Administration’s Gender Policy Proposal
LGBTQ groups announced protests and rallies in response to President Donald Trump administration’s proposal to narrow down the legal definition of gender, the Hill reports.
Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Transgender Equality, and other prominent LGBTQ organizations and advocacy groups announced demonstrations in New York City and Washington D.C.
The New York protest will take place Sunday evening, and the D.C. protest will be held Monday morning in front of the White House.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) supplied a statement to the Hill.
“A federal court has blocked HHS’s rule on gender identity and termination of pregnancy as contrary to law and infringing the rights of healthcare providers across the country.”
The unequivocal denouncement of the Trump administration’s gender policy proposal comes shortly after a New York Times report that the government is looking into narrowly defining gender as “a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.”
This maneuver would, according to the NYT, roll back a series of policies put in place by former President Barack Obama’s administration. Obama’s policies loosened the legal concept of gender, recognizing it as an individual choice and not as a biological fact.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to the New York Times that the administration is indeed looking into rolling back certain Obama-era protections for LGBTQ individuals.
Several LGBTQ advocacy groups have already started social media campaigns, urging Americans to join the demonstrations.
We’ve always known this administration intends nothing short of the destruction of our communities. Here, written out plain, is their attempt to erase our very existence as transgender people. We #WontBeErased, we will fight back. https://t.co/R9F4UVW7Bk
— TransgenderLawCenter (@TransLawCenter) October 21, 2018
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio and actress Sara Ramirez will speak at Lambda Legal’s Washington D.C. demonstration.
The organization’s senior attorney Sasha Buchert told the Hill that LGBTQ individuals have managed to build protections in all areas of life – education, healthcare, and employment – over the years, adding that the Trump administration’s decision to narrow down the legal definition of gender is “out of step” with the law and with the medical consensus.
“It’s deeply concerning that our federal government has chosen to disregard decades of existing law to push forward what are clearly ideologically-driven policy views about who transgender people are,” Buchert concluded.
In February this year, Politico observed that President Donald Trump contradicted his own promises to defend LGBTQ rights made during the campaign, letting the nation’s health agencies crack down on LGBTQ health initiatives one by one.
Health department officials expressed concern over some members of the administration. One of them, Roger Severino, has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments, according to Politico.
