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AFSCME Stands with Transgender People, Who #WontBeErased

AFSCME members — women, men, transgender and gender nonconforming — provide the vital services that make America happen. They never quit on their communities and AFSCME never quits on them.
Photo Credit: Getty / Yana Paskova / Stringer
AFSCME Stands with Transgender People, Who #WontBeErased
By AFSCME Staff ·

AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders today issued a statement in support of transgender people across this country whom the Trump administration is trying to deprive of legal protections.

“President Trump, who assured LGBTQ Americans that he would be their faithful ally, is proving once again to be a vicious antagonist,” Saunders said.

According to a memo of the Department of Health and Human Services that was obtained by The New York Times, the Trump administration is pushing for a narrower definition of gender than currently exists in the federal government, potentially depriving transgender individuals of legal protections.

“The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with,” according to the Times. “Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”

Under the Obama administration, gender was not determined by the sex assigned at birth but by individual choice. The change by the Trump administration “would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into,” according to the Times.

Within hours of this news, the hashtag #WontBeErased circulated on social media. Rallies in support of transgender people have taken place in New York and Washington, D.C., outside the White House.

AFSCME members — women, men, transgender and gender nonconforming — provide the vital services that make America happen. They never quit on their communities and AFSCME never quits on them. At the 43rd International Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, AFSCME adopted a resolution (No. 14) to ensure the fair treatment and freedom from discrimination for transgender and gender nonconforming members.

“The regulatory change being considered by the administration is a cruel and crude attempt to deny the humanity of transgender people, to strip them of basic civil rights protections at school and at work, in housing and in health care,” Saunders said. “Once again, the administration is choosing the most divisive path, stoking fear and resentment, pandering to the forces of bigotry. But transgender people, no matter what, #WontBeErased.”

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