State-sanctioned bigotry targets transgender people

It's cruel. It's vicious. It's state-sanctioned bigotry.

Using the flimsy pretense of modifying the insurance laws, intolerant Florida legislators want to deny the legal existence of transgender people by requiring their driver's licenses to list only their sex at birth — not their gender identity.

The bill (HB 1639), which also applies to state-issued ID cards, requires health plans to cover the widely discredited practice of conversion therapy, even at higher costs to transgender patients.

The legislation would codify a recent abrupt policy reversal by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles that rescinds its two-year-old policy that allowed transgender people to update their gender markers when they got a replacement license.

In a Jan. 26 memo, a senior agency official, Robert Kynoch, said the state had no legal authority to allow people to update their gender markers in the first place. The agency is headed by Dave Kerner, a former Palm Beach County commissioner and state legislator.

"Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state's ability to enforce its laws," Kynoch wrote to Florida tax collectors, who issue most driver's licenses.

That reversal is equally outrageous. It's further proof of how the DeSantis administration policy of marginalizing minority groups — and the LGBTQ community in particular — is now embedded in the bureaucracy in ways that could harm Floridians' everyday lives.

This is truly scary, and it's the logical result of state-sanctioned bigotry and intolerance at the highest levels of government. "In Florida, you do not get to play identity politics with your driver license," Highway Safety spokesman Molly Best said in an email to the Sun Sentinel.

On a party-line vote of 12 to 6, with Republicans voting yes and Democrats voting no, the House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee recently advanced this terrible bill.

The sponsors are Republican Reps. Doug Bankson, a pastor from Apopka in suburban Orlando, and Dean Black of Jacksonville, who, without data or evidence, proclaimed that "many, many people" who are trans have regretted it, and deserve insurance coverage for what is known as de-transitioning.

"We need to make sure that they're covered," Black said.

This from a Legislature that shows no interest whatsoever in expanding Medicaid to cover about 800,000 uninsured Florida residents.

The lawmakers plowed ahead despite pleas from advocates, family members and clergy that such a law could put transgender people at risk of violence for something as simple as using their license to buy a bottle of wine.

What happens if people don't comply? We have a lot of questions, as does the ACLU of Florida.

Will their license be revoked? Will they no longer be able to hold a valid license? If they drive with a license that indicates their gender and not their sex assigned at birth, will they face criminal penalties?

These aren't hypothetical questions. Another Black-sponsored bill, HB 1233, provides that trans individuals' licenses will be revoked and not renewed if they do not indicate sex assigned at birth.

In the midst of a statewide property insurance crisis, the Insurance Committee should focus on real, not manufactured, insurance problems.

But for two hours, Republicans instead talked about "genitalia at birth," "the laws of nature" and becoming transgender, which they described as "medically mutilated."

The ranking Democrat on the panel, Rep. Christine Hunschofsky of Parkland, forcefully criticized Black's use of the "mutilation" language, telling him: "Words matter. How we talk matters."

Joining Hunschofsky in voting no were Reps. Marie Woodson of Hollywood and newly elected Tom Keen of Orlando.

Some people awoke as early as 3 a.m. and made the long drive to Tallahassee to testify, and were given a maximum of two minutes to speak.

Ray McClory of Sanford, whose transgender daughter came out as an adult after years of depression and whose life improved, fought back tears as he warned legislators that they were making a catastrophic mistake.

"What is the purpose of this bill?" McClory told legislators. "Think of how many people it's going to hurt."

This is government overreach at its absolute worst, and an abuse of political power.

— South Florida Sun Sentinel