NJ Legalizes Transgender Birth Certificate Alterations, Creates Trans Equality 'Task Force'
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed legislation that allows persons identifying as transgender to alter their legal documents to reflect their preferred gender identity.
As reported by NJ.com, among the three bills Murphy, a Democrat, signed into law Tuesday was A1718, which requires the state Registrar of Vital Statistics to issue amended birth certificates to persons born in New Jersey with their new name and sex.
Another, A1726, allows the person planning a funeral service for a transgender-identified individual to request the death certificate show his or her preferred gender identity and name. The third, A1727, creates a task force on transgender equality "to assess legal and societal barriers to equality" and recommend future measures to prevent discrimination.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"Today is an important day for New Jersey as we continue to strive toward equality for all of our residents, regardless of sex or gender expression," Murphy said in a statement.
Approximately 30,100 people in New Jersey identify as transgender, according to a 2016 report from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
The law allowing for the changes to be made on birth certificates also scraps the previous requirement that the individual must prove with medical records that he or she had undergone sex reassignment surgery.
"Our existing law does not support the understanding that gender reassignment surgery is no longer the only option for transitioning," said state senator Joseph Vitale, a Democrat from Middlesex.
"By enacting this legislation, we acknowledge nonsurgical transitioning which usually includes physical, psychological, social, and emotional changes."
New Jersey is the 17th state to cease requiring proof of surgery to make changes on death records and the 4th state to include a transgender identity option on birth certificates alongside California, Oregon, and Washington state.
Yet not everyone is thrilled with the legal changes and is expressing alarm at the rapidity at which they are happening and the money behind this particular push.
"We need to ask why the trans lobby is hell bent on this project of deconstructing biological sex and why this is being supported by billionaires, banks, corporations, politicians, governments pushing it through universities and now grade schools at a break neck pace, even against parental and public consent," commented Jennifer Bilek, an artist, writer, and contributor to the Federalist, in an email to The Christian Post Thursday.
"This could be likened to waking up one day finding all the street signs changed and expecting everyone to just drive normally. Agreed upon language for things are like road signs. They help us get from point A to point B safely because everyone understands them the same way."
Far too many do not realize the implications of these moves since denoting sex is important for health statistics and crime figures and fighting sex-based oppression and discrimination, she added.
Bilek documented in The Federalist Thursday how so much of this ideology is driven by big business interests that stand to benefit financially from mass marketing it to a society under the guise of civil rights. She has previously argued and continues to maintain that the transgender movement is largely funded by corporate white elites from the pharmaceutical, medical, and bio-tech industries who profit from the insistence that "gender identity" is innate and that it is possible to physically change one's biological sex.
"It is not possible for a human beings to change, or 'identify out of,' his or her sex. A male person cannot become female. Male people who wish to enter the intimate spaces that are reserved for female people are invading women's spaces, which is sexist," she asserted.
"Human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals. This statement is neither conservative nor bigoted. It is simply an assertion that is grounded in material reality."
In New Jersey, similar legislation had always stopped under Murphy's predecessor, Chris Christie, a Republican, who vetoed such bills twice during his eight years as governor. Christie expressed worry about allowing such changes, citing the risk of "fraud, deception, and abuse" as well as national security threats since birth certificates are used to obtain passports and driver's licenses.
The state laws are being enacted following the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association approval of a new policy in November allowing transgender-identifying student athletes to participate on sports teams of the opposite sex.
