The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services allowed public comment today during a hearing where they considered keeping an emergency rule that bars individuals from changing their sex on their birth certificate while Senate Bill 280 is being challenged in court by the ACLU and other plaintiffs.

SB 280, passed in the 2021 legislative session, requires a court order ruling that a persons sex has been “changed” by a surgical procedure before their birth certificate can be amended by DPHHS. In 2017, the department said they would allow a simple affidavit written by the individual to make the change. SB 280 requires more than a simple notarized letter to make the change to an individuals sex on their birth certificate.

We should not allow people the ability to imperil women and to rewrite history by permitting them to amend their sex on a legal birth document based on their en vogue and anti-science opinions about their biology. Many of these individuals are in fragile mental states and also often “detransition” with even more mental struggles than they had entering into the procedures that mutilated their bodies and degraded their mental and physical health.

The ability for anyone to change their sex on their birth certificate compellingly imperils and threatens women by further obscuring male bodies that compete with female bodies in athletics, for public services, and in other spaces hard fought by and for women. This also threatens the safety of women incarcerated alongside male bodies.

No person that considers themselves “transgender” is blocked from cosplaying as another gender. 

Two-spirit individuals are distinct from the transgender phenomenon and it is repulsive to myself and many native indigenous people when “allies” attempt to erase two-spirit individuals by flattening them into the “trans” phenomenon. 

The public comment provided during the hearing was brigaded by an astroturf operation organized by the most radical left fringe of Montana and does not represent the overwhelming majority of Montanans. Nearly every commenter read from the same script asking the department to reinstate their 2017 policy allowing sex change on a birth certificate with a simple affidavit.

In recently released survey data from the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans who believe that sex is determined at birth increased in 2021 and again in 2022.

I urge the DPHHS to take these dissents to their emergency rule with a grain of salt and to maintain the rule at least until the merits of SB 280 can be decided. For the mental health of all Montanans.

Montanan’s can submit their public comment on this matter by 5pm on July 8th by emailing [email protected].