The proposal also reflects how the transgender movement has become politically potent, having roots in the muscular politics of the city's gay rights movement.
Transgender advocates consider the New York proposal an overdue bulwark against discrimination that recognizes an emerging shift away from viewing gender as simply the sum of one's physical parts. However, some psychiatrists and doctors are skeptical of the move, saying sexual self-definition should stop at rewriting medical history.
"They should not change the sex at birth, which is a factual record," said Arthur Zitrin, a Midtown Manhattan psychiatrist who was on the panel of transgender experts convened by the city. "If they wanted to change the gender for all the compelling reasons that they've given, it should be done perhaps with an asterisk."
The change would lead to many intriguing questions: For example, would a man who becomes a woman be able to marry another man? (Probably.) Would an adoption agency be able to uncover the original sex of a proposed parent? (Not without a court order.) Would a woman who becomes a man be able to fight in combat, or play in the National Football League? (These areas have yet to be explored.)
The Board of Health, which weighs recommendations drafted by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is scheduled to vote on the proposal in December, and officials say they expect it to be adopted.
At the final public hearing for the proposal last week, a string of advocates and transsexuals suggested that common definitions of gender, especially its reliance on medical assessments, should be abandoned.
The fact that our sex is written in the DNA in every cell in our body, seems to be no obstacle for these wise men of compassion.
Is there is no respect for truth? There seems to be no end to foolishness...
Read more at TBO.com
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...Psalm 111:10
