Plus: Staten Island stabbing, a GOP anti-bullying bill and Stonewall Dems’ Endorsement Flap
Additional financial woes arrive as city trims $5.5 million in HIV/AIDS funds and the CDC announces a 40 percent spike in estimated HIV infections.
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Monday, December 11, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) — City health officials last Tuesday withdrew a plan that would have allowed New Yorkers to switch the sex on their birth certificates without undergoing sex-change surgery.
Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said the issue needed further study, in part to guarantee it wouldn’t conflict with federal rules now being developed. But transgender advocates vow to press forward.
Like most other cities and states, New York has long allowed people who have undergone sex-change surgery to get a new birth certificate reflecting the change by removing any reference to gender.
Based on recommendations from the city’s Board of Health, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had proposed in September that the policy be liberalized further to include people who had taken other steps short of surgery to irrevocably alter their gender identity.
The new policy would have allowed the fact that someone had been taking hormones to count as one of the criteria for changing one’s birth record. Other requirements included proof that one had been living in said gender for at least two years, had legally changed their name, and confirmation of a gender change by two medical professionals.
The plan would have made the city the first in the country with such a policy, health officials said.
While it delayed making that change, the Board of Health went ahead with a related policy revision that for the first time will allow people who have undergone sex-change surgery to list their new sex on their birth documents. Previously, the city had simply issued a new birth certificate that removed any reference to gender.
"The reality for transgender people is that almost none get the kind of gender reassignment surgery that the Department of Health requires," said Michael Silverman, executive director of Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. "So to the extent that these proposals and policies are supposed to be benefitting a particular community, they’re completely out of touch with reality."
Dr. Frieden told the New York Times it was "unfortunate" the panel of experts that made the proposals did not include anyone from institutions that rely on gender designations such as jails, schools or hospitals.
"This is something we hadn’t fully thought through, frankly," said Dr. Frieden, as reported by the Times. "What the birth certificate shows does have implications beyond just what the birth certificate shows."
But Michael Silverman said the issues in question had already been considered extensively by city officials.
"When we adopted guidelines for the [city’s] Human Rights Law, all of this was considered, it was vetted through every city agency," he said, adding that the human rights guidelines already stipulate that hospitals cannot discriminate on basis of gender identity. St. Vincent’s Hospital, for example, automatically provides private rooms to transgender individuals.
Silverman said transgender advocates have already resolved to move forward on the issue by engaging elected officials and organizing protests.
"This isn’t an issue that we are just willing to roll over on," he said, noting that the ruling was a partial step forward. "Two months ago, no one knew what we were talking about when we spoke of the lack of identity documents for transgender people and today it’s agenda item that has to be dealt with."
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