...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.
The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
emphasis added
Here we go again, with the DNA testing.
Since coming into office, the Trump administration has been working to roll bask policies the Obama administration had put in place.
...The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.
Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from the 2020 census and a national survey of elderly citizens.
emphasis added
An administration headed by a notorious sexual predator is attempting to codify gender bias into the law. It’s another way of playing the victim card — straight people are under threat from the LGBTQ menace and their increasing entitlement. While this is a continuation of GOP catering to an increasingly intolerant base, the timing is also of note.
While the Times article does not mention it, pushing this issue now is going to be a challenge to Democrats who will be called on to defend the Obama era guidelines. They risk alienating their base if they fail to address this, they risk energizing the GOP base if they do — and you know the attack ads are already waiting to go. The GOP is using the culture war playbook to ramp up fear of ‘the other’ and distract voters away from issues where the GOP is vulnerable. This is hand-in-hand with the drive to load the courts with activist conservative judges, drastically reshape Title IX programs, the policies on sexual assault Betsy De Kos is overturning , etc. etc.
It’s part of the overall GOP strategy to hold on to power by playing the fear card everywhere they can: fear of immigrants, fear of terrorists, fear of LGBTQ people, fear of deficits, fear of brown people, fear of angry liberal mobs — fear of pretty much everything. Only Republicans can save America from this — Democrats are trying to destroy the country.
That’s the message, and there’s nothing subtle about it. This is classic authoritarianism at work. The GOP has made fear messaging into a powerful political weapon. They coordinate it, they rehearse it, they promote it everywhere.
The Democratic Party has to be ready to address this in every way they can. They need to be just as coordinated, just as focused, and just as determined. This can’t be side-stepped or brushed aside, because the attacks will be relentless. Suggestions on counter-messaging in comments would be useful.
To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — and those who have chosen to make it a weapon.
GOPus delenda est. Vote blue.