Groups that oppose gender ideology, including parental rights and religious organizations, have embraced President Donald Trump’s executive order against the theory and funding that promotes it, while proponents have vowed to resist his agenda.
“It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said.
Erin Friday, an attorney and leader of Our Duty, a group that rejects gender ideology, told The Epoch Times that she is “very impressed” with the president’s executive order, but noticed that he “misspoke ever so slightly” by using the word “genders” instead of “sexes.”
“What he meant to say is that there are two sexes,” she said. “Obviously, that’s what he meant because that’s within the executive order.”
The order states “sex” shall refer to an individual’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female,” and is not a synonym for nor does it “include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
The erasure of sex in language and policy has had a “corrosive impact” on women and “the validity of the entire American system,” the order states.
Before the transgender movement, the word “sex” was universally understood to mean male or female, and “gender” was a parochial term for sex when people didn’t want to say sex because it was “too adult,” but the term was “hijacked” to mean something else, Friday said.
The order states that “gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex,” and that “is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
The notion that everyone has both a sex and a gender that don’t always align spread rapidly in the United States, and the term “gender identity” made its way into the lexicon.
Friday said the executive order “says everything we need to know—gender is this ethereal, made-up internal belief, and sex is real.”
“You could go back for years and ask anyone what a female or male is, and they would all describe the same thing, and then suddenly it became confusing, like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’” Friday said.
Title IX
The original text of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 doesn’t mention gender.Title IX is a civil rights law passed by Congress that requires schools that receive federal funding to provide equal educational opportunities to boys and girls, and protects their rights to have sex-segregated sports teams and private spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
In a reversal, Trump’s executive order requires intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) to be designated by sex and not identity.
The order has the teeth to cut federal funding to schools that violate the original Title IX provisions and states that federal funds, including grants, can’t be used to promote gender ideology.
It also bans men from being detained in women’s prisons or detention centers and states that no federal funds are to be spent on any medical procedure, treatment, or drug “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Friday believes that the U.S. Supreme Court will inevitably have to grapple with the question of whether “sex” will prevail over “gender identity” in legal matters, especially when it comes to women’s spaces, such as locker rooms, bathrooms, and prisons.
“Gender identity and sex cannot coexist. You can’t have both. There has to be a hierarchy,” she said. “You cannot protect against sex discrimination and also protect against gender identity discrimination. They are incompatible.”
Criticism From Advocacy Groups
Equality California, an LGBT advocacy group, responded to Trump’s early actions and vowed to fight against such policies, accusing him of “divisive politics” and trying to “undermine and eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ people.”“We are working in close coordination with pro-equality legislators in Sacramento and D.C. and alongside California’s vast network of LGBTQ+ and allied organizations to further protect our rights and ensure that California remains a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people across the country,” the group said in a statement.
The nonprofit organization has consistently backed California legislation pushing so-called gender-affirming care.
“While the new administration represents uncertainty for many in our community, we will remain vigilant in holding our leaders accountable for our nation’s Constitutional principles of freedom, equality, and justice,” the group said in the statement.
Equality California said Trump’s executive actions will take time to be implemented administratively and legally and may never be fully realized.
“We stand unwavering, ready to fight alongside our partners against any unjust and harmful action this administration may take toward our community,” the group said in the statement.
Kathie Moehlig, executive director of San Diego-based TransFamily Support Services, who has been an advocate for “gender-affirming care” legislation in California, did not respond to a request for comment.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener, an LGBT activist and proponent of gender ideology, condemned the executive order on Jan. 21.
Truth and Tolerance
Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council (CFC), a Christian-based organization that opposes gender ideology, applauded the executive order and inaugural speech, urging more Californians, including Republicans, to be “as blunt as Trump” when talking about gender.“There are only two of them,” he told The Epoch Times. “I don’t hear a lot of that, but that’s what’s needed.”
Burt said the CFC supports Trump’s efforts to return the country “to sanity,” and has officially recognized that people are either “physically male or female.”
In response to Wiener’s X post, Burt said both the state Legislature and Biden administration mandated that Californians and all Americans accept their new definition of sex.
“That policy let men parade around naked in women’s locker rooms; it led to women being assaulted and raped in prison; it led to girls’ sports being destroyed by boys eager to take advantage of their natural strength to excel in women’s sports, and it led to parents losing custody of their children because they insisted their children’s sex was determined by their biology and not their feelings,” Burt said.
Most Californians agree on the reality of biological sex, but policies pushed by the state Legislature don’t reflect the will of the people, he said.
While the CFC acknowledges that people who identify as transgender with gender dysphoria exist, government policy now states that men and women can no longer become the opposite sex simply by declaring it, Burt said.
“That isn’t radical,” he said. “That is how it has been for thousands of years.”
Burt is hopeful that federal funds will be withdrawn from any school or program promoting gender ideology.
“Lawsuits need to be filed against any school subject to Title IX, where females are losing opportunities because males are allowed to pretend they are women,” he said.
Referring to the use of medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat people with gender dysphoria, Burt said such patients can be offered “real help” to deal with this condition rather than “treatments that leave them maimed and sterilized for life.”
Burt appealed for tolerance, saying it doesn’t mean that people who identify as transgender should live in fear.
“We need to learn to live at peace with those who see life differently,” he said.
Among other directives, Trump’s order requires federal agencies to take “all necessary steps” to end the federal funding of gender ideology and make changes to government-issued identification documents, including passports and visas, to reflect sex and not gender identity.
