New York City is expected to adopt a Board of Health policy soon that will allow native New Yorkers with a doctor’s note to change the gender on their birth certificates. Sex change surgery will not be required, but one will be required to show that he/she has been living as a member of the “adopted gender†for at least two years.
Almost all states allow a gender change on one’s birth certificate for people who have undergone transgender surgery, but the New York City policy may be the first in the U.S. to allow a person to change one’s “legal gender” without surgery.
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.†(Gen. 1:27). One’s God-given gender is genetically encoded; each cell contains a pair of gender chromosomes: XY for males and XX for females. A person should not seek to change his/her God-given gender, either surgically or legally.
If people are allowed to change their “legal gender†as a matter of personal choice, will homosexuals seize upon that as a maneuver to achieve same-sex marriages? Since 1998, 20 states have adopted constitutional bans on same-sex marriages: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Utah. Six states are voting today on similar constitutional amendments: Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
As conservatives succeed in safeguarding the legal definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, look for the next battleground to be the legal definition of gender.
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You might want to glance at a similar opinion piece posted by Chuck Colson on Nov. 21, 2006. See: “Pick Your Nose, Not Your Gender.”
