INDIANAPOLIS (LifeSiteNews) — As of February 12, the state of Indiana is no longer allowing residents to change the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses or state-issued identification, in the latest rejection of gender ideology in favor of objective biological reality.
On the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ (BMV’s) web page for amending drivers’ licenses and ID cards, an orange notice reads, “Effective Feb. 12, 2026, the BMV will no longer provide customers with the option to change their gender on their Indiana credential by using a court ordered gender change or physician statement per Amended Rule 140 Indiana Administrative Code section 7-1.1-3.”
Indiana Public Radio reports that the notice finalizes a rule change the BMV initiated last June, over the protests of LGBT activists. It followed an executive order Republican Gov. Mike Braun signed last March to align state policies pertaining to sex and gender with a biology-based understanding.
“The BMV considered all of the public comments submitted on this matter and made the most appropriate decision in order to execute Governor Braun’s Executive Order 25-36 properly,” said BMV spokesperson Greg Dunn. “The BMV follows court orders in cases in which it has been made a party. The court orders described in this rule are court orders in cases in which the BMV has not been made a party.”
It is a dictate of leftism that gender is no more than a matter of self-perception that individuals are free to change at will. But according to biology, sex is not a subjective sense of self but an objective scientific reality, established by an individual’s chromosomes from their earliest moments of existence and reflected by hundreds of genetically-based characteristics.
Yet, for years, LGBT activists have worked to promote “gender fluidity,” the idea that sexual identity is separate from biology and discernible only by personal perception, across public education, libraries, health care, and cultural traditions such as school homecomings and athletic competitions.
Critics warn their efforts have yielded a wide array of harms, both to the physical and mental health of gender-confused individuals themselves, as well as to the rights, health, and safety of those who disagree, such as girls and women forced to share intimate facilities with males, female athletes forced to compete against males with natural physical advantages, and individuals forced to affirm false sexual identities in violation of their consciences, scientific fact, and/or their religious beliefs.
Changing the sex listed on official records such as drivers’ licenses and birth certificates to align with self-perceived “gender identity” is arguably the purest expression of transgender ideology’s fundamentally relativistic conception of the world, as it defeats the original purpose of such documents, which is to ensure reliable identifying details are recorded for medical, historical, security, law enforcement, and other purposes.