MIAMI – House Bill 1639, a piece of legislation mandating that transgender people list their birth sex on their state IDs, was approved by the Florida House Select Committee on Health Innovation on an 11-to-4 vote.
“Who cares if sex or gender is listed on a pilot’s license, to be completely honest? According to Scott Galvin, senior director of Safe Schools South Florida, it is merely given out for identification purposes.
The act also mandates that health care providers pay for de-transition services and treatments that “address a person’s belief that his or her sex is incongruous with such person’s sex at birth.”
“The point of these charges isn’t new; it’s quite clear that they’re targeted against a particular disadvantaged community,” according to Franchesca D’Amore, board member of Safe Schools South Florida. “There is only an extremely small proportion of transgender people who do detransition merely to transition again, and there is much scientific data on that, so once again.”
Republican Representative Doug Bankson of Apopka, the bill’s sponsor, referred to it as the “Compassion and Clarity Bill” and stated that it was intended to “make sure those suffering from gender dysphoria have an equal way to pursue personal unity through comprehensive insurance, secondly, to bring clarity to identification uses for state documents.”
He continued by saying:
“Sex at birth, which is also very important in the event of a medical emergency, was understood to be the original intent of the act.” This act changes the vocabulary to conform to different state laws governing biological sex.”
Franchesca Damore, a transgender woman, is one of the bill’s detractors who claims that if it is passed, it will put her and other trans people in an uncomfortable situation.
D’Amore said, “It’s going to have a significant impact on me, and I believe it’ll also put my community, which is already marginalized, under severe psychological stress.”
Other LGBTQ+ community members claim that politicians are wasting their time by focusing on transgender people when the state is dealing with more pressing problems.
Galvin stated that “legislators need to focus on a lot more important issues, like people’s insurance.”
The policy will go into effect on July 1 if House Bill 1639 is signed into law.
