AUSTIN, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — Gender-confused individuals in Texas can no longer have their registered sex changed on driver’s licenses and other state identification cards due to a policy change championed by conservative state officials.
KUT News reported that, effective last week, sex can only be changed to correct clerical errors in how it was originally listed, according to the Driver License Division at the Texas Department of Public Safety. Requests to change to align with an applicant’s claimed “transgender identity” will not be accommodated.
“The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has recently raised concerns regarding the validity of court orders being issued which purport to order state agencies — including DPS — to change the sex of individuals in government records, including driver licenses and birth certificates,” the Department of Public Safety said when asked for the impetus for the change.
“Neither DPS nor other government agencies are parties to the proceedings that result in the issuance of these court orders, and the lack of legislative authority and evidentiary standards for the Courts to issue these orders has resulted in the need for a comprehensive legal review by DPS and the OAG,” it continued. “Therefore, as of Aug. 20, 2024, DPS has stopped accepting these court orders as a basis to change sex identification in department records – including driver licenses.”
“The sex will reflect the sex listed on the primary document presented upon original application that is already on file,” clarified an email announcing the change to state employees. “This does not mean we will deny the issuance of or renewal of the DL/ID. The issuance can proceed with documentation on file, and this decision will be left up to the customer. If a first-time applicant presents conflicting documents, such as a birth certificate with a court order requiring a sex change, the sex listed on the original birth certificate will take precedence to record the sex.”
LGBT activists complained that the move is an attempt to circumvent court orders sympathetic to transgender ideology. Conservatives, however, warn that sex changes on official records should not be indulged, both to uphold the reality of the two sexes and to maintain the intended purpose of accurate identifying details on state IDs.
It is a tenet of progressivism 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 genetic 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 beauty contests, school homecomings, and athletic competitions.
Critics note that 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.