Tennessee Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Legally Define Male And Female
GOP lawmakers in Tennessee are pushing advanced legislation that would stop transgender individuals from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
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The legislation, which was advanced by the state’s Republican-controlled House Administration Committee on Thursday, has sparked outrage among the LGBTQ+ community and their advocates.
While the latter has always claimed that matching a person’s gender identity to their birth certificate or driver’s license will protect the rights of transgender people and prevent harassment, proponents of the bill argue that it is necessary to prevent fraud and protect the integrity of state records.
The bill seeks to establish definitions of male and female in state law so that gender will be determined solely based on an individual’s anatomy at birth. This means that the gender assigned to an individual at birth would be the only determining factor for their legal gender identity.
Rep. Gino Bulso (R-TN), who sponsors the bill, explained that there are only two types of people in the world. “We’ve got men and we’ve got women. We have males and we have females,” he stated.
Likening the endorsement of transgenderism to spitting “in the face of God as a nation,” Rep. Rusty Grills (R-TN) said the U.S. is facing the wrong path on the issue of gender. “God created man, He created woman. He put them in this world to procreate and to read and replenish the world,” the lawmaker said.
Legislative officials responsible for determining the financial impact of bills have, however, warned that Bulso’s proposed legislation might come at huge costs to the state as it is likely to expose the state to “civil litigation and potential loss of federal funding.”
This is due to the bill’s potential conflict with federal regulations, which could lead to legal challenges and financial penalties for the state.
According to officials, the bill could cause the state of Tennessee a potential loss of $1.2 billion in federal education funding and $750,000 in money aimed at providing support for women and children.
But Bulso believes the mission matters more than the costs. “In my view, this body should do what’s right regardless of the cost. I don’t care what it costs to do what’s right.” he said.
About three weeks ago, Bulso filed a bill that would codify the term that specified gender as a person’s immutable biological gender “as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”
Tennessee is not the only state considering legislation that would crack down on transgenderism on the state level. Similar bills have been proposed in several other states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.