To begin: here’s a link to a petition to reinstate the rights that the Immortan decided it would be acceptable to strip. (Yes, I’m referring to our president as the Immortan, like in Mad Max. I don’t want to use his name, but I’ve been calling him this in my head since before he was elected because it suits and I like it better than starring out letters or making puns.)
Quoth CNN:
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, known as the Health Care Rights Law, “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in certain health programs and activities.” A rule enacted in 2016 interpreted the ban on sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity, building on similar interpretations in other federal civil rights laws and court rulings, and termination of pregnancy.
But the US Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Friday that it was eliminating “certain provisions of the 2016 Rule that exceeded the scope of the authority delegated by Congress in Section 1557. HHS will enforce Section 1557 by returning to the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”
This is obviously abhorrent and aggressively transphobic, and comes on the heels of both a lot of public figureheads discussing transphobia and trans rights (I’m looking at you, Joanne; I’m not going to get into that here, though, other than to say you’re also abhorrent and that’s just the facts) and the unforgivable recent murders of Black trans women (link).
This decision was also made public on June 12th, which is doubly significant: June is Pride Month, and June 12th is the anniversary of the mass shooting at Pulse, a Florida nightclub catering to queer patrons. 49 people were killed and 50 more were injured; most of them were LGBTQ+ and/or Latino, making it “the deadliest act of violence against LGBTQ+ people in the US.” (Also quoth CNN.)
I’m not going to say that this move of the Immortan’s was the “last straw,” because it’s not. He’s been piling up last straws since he came into office. But it took me back to four years ago, and I feel like I need to talk about it. Not to put my voice over anyone else’s, but because it was a significant moment in history.
Full story here.