(The Center Square) – Florida driver’s licenses and other state government documents would have to list a person’s gender at birth under a bill pending in the House of Representatives.
House Bill 1639 was sponsored by Republican Rep. Doug Bankson, who helped found and is a pastor with his wife at Victory Church in Apopka.
The legislation would also require insurance companies that cover sex transitioning surgery to also cover detransitioning surgery.
“I call it the Compassion and Clarity Act,” the legislator told The Center Square.
The requirement of birth gender on government documents has an important medical aspect, the legislator said.
“For first responders, if the patient is unable to speak, it’s important to know what the underlying sexual framework is of their body,” Bankson said. “If you don’t know that sex at birth was female, if there are ovaries and a possible pregnancy, that could be a major issue. Seconds count when it comes to medical.”
The purpose of state documents such as driver’s licenses is not personal expression, Bankson said.
“Personal expression is just that, it is everyone’s personal right,” he said. “But this is a government document. So, I believe it is important to have a standard that is based on a scientific fact of our sex at birth.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, however, has condemned the bill.
“The anti-trans bill, HB1639, seeks to deny the legal existence of transgender individuals by requiring that individuals provide their sex assigned at birth instead of their gender on their driver’s license and government identification cards,” Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel at the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “This repressive legislature is not only trying to censor the very existence of trans individuals, it is one bill away from threatening their very existence by forcing them to choose between their gender identity or criminalization, simply for not conforming to the rigid gender classifications imposed by the majority in the legislature.”
Bankson denies that the legislation is anti-trans.
“I actually have genuine compassion for people dealing with gender dysphoria,” he said. “I think it is a difficult path and no one knows but the person who has walked it. I think we need to have human dignity and respect of one another. I don’t hate anyone.”