God made them male and female. Now the department of motor vehicles is pulling rank.
Michigan may soon join 13 other states in offering a third gender on driver’s licenses. “We’re exploring with the vendor whether there’s a possibility to add a nonbinary designation,” a spokesman for the secretary of state said. “We’ve heard the calls from LGBT communities across the state, both individuals and groups.”
There’s certainly an intense lobbying effort for the nonbinary and transgender community. How many individuals will be affected by these changes, though, is not clear. Oregon, for instance, allows people to check off “not specified,” on their license applications: about 3,000 Oregonians — less than 0.1% of those with state ID cards have done so.
Nic Sakurai was the first person in the United States to get a gender-neutral driver’s license. The Washington, D.C., DMV replaced the “M” on Sakurai’s “sex” field with an “X” in July 2017.
“I don’t feel that sense of gender as something that is part of my core innate experience,” said Sakurai, who asks to be described by plural pronouns “they” and “them” instead of “he” and “him.”
DMVs around the country have added another form for drivers to fill out. In addition to paperwork for changing your address or your name, California offers Form DL 329, “For the purpose of ensuring my driver’s license/identification card accurately reflects my gender identity.” The form provides three choices, of course.
New York City is going beyond letting you change who you are. It’s allowing you to change who you used to be. The city passed a law in 2018, enabling city residents to change the sex on their birth certificates. So now, New Yorkers can rewrite their birth on official documents.
It’s a brave new world, and city bureaucrats and the DMV are at the vanguard.
