According to one activist, this act “would directly hurt the transgender community in West Virginia.”
A bill called HB 4233, which prohibits the term “nonbinary” from appearing on birth certificates and requires the inclusion of a person’s sex (male/female) on the document, was passed by West Virginia Democrats and Republicans in the House of Delegates on Friday.
LGBTQ activists criticized the Democrats who voted in favor of the bill, claiming that their votes revealed their position on transgender rights, even though West Virginia currently forbids changing the sex symbol on birth certificates to nonbinary.
West Virginian author and ACLU-WV staff member Jamie Miller said on social media, “This isn’t even a thing- you can change birth certificates but NOT to nonbinary, so the dems who will say it’s done DID something to their voter base.” When you vote for your own passions, you ignore the people of West Virginia, which says a lot.
Hollis Lewis, Joey Garcia, Kayla Young, Ric Griffith, Sean Hornbuckle, and self-described “Lefty” Shawn Fluharty are among the Democrats who voted in favor of the bill.
Democrats ignore the identities of nonbinary and gender nonbinary West Virginians and the existence of transgender individuals in their position by approving this bill. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) estimates that 1.7 percent of people are born with atypical or intersex traits.
Laws like this support the risky but common practice of making trans children have surgeries to change their gonads, internal reproductive systems, and genitalia so that they more closely resemble stereotypical male or female traits. Children who grow up to identify as a gender different from the one their bodies were physically altered to be more like may experience psychological distress as the result of these surgeries.
When it seems that so few people are interested in the issue, critics —often liberal Democrats—may wonder why the ban on birth certificates is condemned. In response to the vote, Morgantown City Council member Brian Butcher wrote on his site, “Perhaps these critics may think that supporting the tyrant sends a harmful message.” “Intersex people are born about as frequently as people with red hair.” By supporting this bill, you have merely informed every voter who was born or raised in a trans family that they are inadmissible in the eyes of the law.
In one study involving trans individuals, 81 percent of individuals had undergone surgery as a result of their sexual orientation, and 50 percent of those individuals experienced emotional issues. Human rights organizations have criticized this process as a result, saying that it is medically unnecessary and could result in permanent suffering.
Advocates of LGBTQ groups, including Fairness WV, who didn’t follow the bill’s development, criticized it while the ACLU-WV opposed it.
Transgender activist Ash Orr stated on social media that the ACLU of WV, along with LGBTQ+ campaigners and administrators, made it clear that this bill may directly harm the transgender community in West Virginia. “Odd that there was silence from other significant LGBTQ+ neighboring businesses in this state.”
Since the beginning of this year, West Virginia lawmakers have introduced an extra 25 anti-LGBT bills. Since January 1, more than 400 anti-LGBT bills have been introduced in state legislatures all over the nation.
