The State Department will allow U.S. passport applicants to select their own gender even if it does not match the sex on their supporting government documentation, such as a birth certificate or driver’s license.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to announce the change this week, according to the Washington Examiner, fulfilling a campaign promise by President Joe Biden to make the federal government more pro-transgender.
The advisory will include information for individuals seeking a “new passport with a different gender than the one they have on their current passport” to help them “submit a new application and select their preferred gender marker.”
The updated policy also states the federal government is “beginning the process of updating our procedures for the issuance of U.S. passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad (CRBAs) with the goal of offering a gender marker for non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming persons.”
The process of adding a third gender option is “complex,” the advisory states, “and will take time for extensive updates to our information technology (IT) systems.”
GOP officials slammed the policy and the State Department for “jumping on the culture war train” even as it faces a passport backlog caused by the pandemic.
This is just the latest effort by the Biden administration to make the federal government pro-transgender.
In January, as one of his first acts as president, Biden reversed the Trump-era military transgender ban to make the military more “inclusive.”
“America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. The military is no exception,” Biden claimed at the time. “Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do and is in our national interest.”
