Reaction to measure requiring ID cards to show sex assigned at birth
MIAMI - In an 11-4 vote, the Florida House Select Committee on Health Innovation voted in favor of House Bill 1639, a piece of legislation that would require transgender people to list their birth sex on their state ID's.
"Let's be genuine, who cares if gender or sex is listed on a driver's license? It's simply handed over for identity purposes," said Scott Galvin, Executive Director of Safe Schools South Florida.
The bill also requires health care providers to cover de-transition care and therapies that "treat a person's perception that his or her sex is inconclusive with such person's sex at birth,"
"There is just a small percentage of trans people that do detransition only to retransition again, there's a lot of scientific evidence on that, so once again — the point of these bills aren't new — it's very clear that they're targeted against a specific marginalized community," said Franchesca D'Amore, board member of Safe Schools South Florida.
When I requested to interview the bill's sponsor, Republican Representative Doug Bankson from Apopka, he instead told me in a statement, he called the bill the "Compassion and Clarity Bill," saying it was created to address two main points: to "make sure those suffering with gender dysphoria have an equal path to pursue personal wholeness through insurance coverage; Second, to bring clarity to identification purposes for state documents,"
He went on to say:
"The original intent of the statute was understood to mean sex at birth which is also very important in the event of a medical emergency. This bill aligns the language to match other state statutes concerning into biological sex,"
Opponents of the bill, like Franchesca Damore, a transgender woman, say if this bill is passed, it's going to put her and other transgender people in a difficult situation.
"It's going to affect me greatly — I think it's also going to cause a lot of psychological stress for my community who's already marginalized as it is," said D'Amore.
Other supporters of the LGBTQ+ community say lawmakers are wasting their time targeting transgender people when the state is facing bigger issues.
"There are a lot more important issues like homeowners' insurance that I feel legislators need to be focused on," said Galvin.
If House Bill 1639 is signed into law, the legislation will take effect on July 1.
