Oct 26, 2018 4 min read

It’s not easy, especially these days, to be “different” in America. If you’re a person of color, from another country, gay or follow a non-Christian religion, you run the risk of being discriminated against by what seems to be a fairly significant segment of our population.

This week, it’s transgender people who are in the crosshairs. They already have a tough road to travel. There are the everyday indignities that come with being a person in a marginalized group. Some trans folks are disowned by family members. They’ve been targeted by ridiculous “bathroom bills” in some of our less-advanced states. Some fall victim to violence, even losing their lives just because of who they are. And now comes a kick in the teeth from the Trump administration, with the president saying they are “seriously” considering a change in the way the government treats transgender people under the law by deeming a person’s sex as something that is determined at birth, and immutable.

According to a Washington Post report, it’s the administration’s Health and Human Services Department that is pushing for the change in order to “negate claims that gender identity – rather than biological gender – can be used for protection under federal civil rights laws such as Title IX, which bans sex discrimination.”

Said Trump, “We’re looking at it. We have a lot of different concepts right now. They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now. And we’re looking at it very seriously.”

The president was asked about his pledge to protect LGBT people, and replied, “You know what I’m doing? I’m protecting everybody.”

If he intends to follow through with the policy change on transgender people, that hardly seems to be the case.

Fortunately, there appears to be some pushback within the administration. The Post reports that the Education Department “is not eager to follow HHS’s lead.” The story notes that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos “has privately supported lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and has been reluctant to dial back their protections.”

Whether her opposition would be enough to scuttle the proposed policy change is unknown, but whatever action is taken affects nearly one and a half million people who now consider their gender to be different from their biological sex at birth.

At a White House rally Monday, the Post spoke with Nicola Van Kuilenburg of Frederick, Md., the parent of an 18-year-old transgender son who is away at college.

“These are the children they would be hurting,” said Van Kuilenburg. “This particular memo is especially cruel because it is an attempt to erase my son’s identity – to erase all these kids’ identities. My son is who he is.”

Of course, people on the right see it differently.

“Throughout history, the word ‘sex’ only had one definition, and you didn’t have to put it into words,” Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for the conservative advocacy group Focus on the Family, told the newspaper. He also asserted that most people with “gender confusion” would “reorient themselves back” to their birth sex if the media and Hollywood would stop giving transgender people so much publicity.

That’s pure foolishness, as is the administration’s consideration of the policy change toward transgender people, which is also mean-spirited and, we would argue, highly un-American.

Transgender Americans have enough problems without the federal government trying to make them invisible, as if they were some kind of mistake to be eradicated. Every person has a right to be who they are, and who they believe they are meant to be, regardless of what it says on their birth certificate. They should be treated with respect, and equality under the law.