NYC's 3rd gender X birth certificate makes male and female obsolete, says Christian philosopher
New York City residents can now legally change their birth certificates to indicate that they identify as transgender or nonbinary.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio signed the measure into law last year, which adds an X designation to birth certificates, along with M for male and F for female.
"To all trans and nonbinary New Yorkers: We see you, hear you and respect you," the mayor's office said Dec. 29 on Twitter.
"Starting in 2019, all New Yorkers will be able to change their gender on their birth certificate to M, F or X — without a doctor's note."
The move has been praised by LGBT activists. "It felt really monumental to me," said Ethan Rice, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, who co-chaired the advisory board that helped create the law, adding that he was grateful "the government is recognizing that transgender people, as citizens, are the ones who know what their identity is and are able to tell the government that really, rather than the other way around."
Others say the move exemplifies how society is abandoning physical reality in service to an incoherent ideology and moving toward the erasure of the human body in the law.
Daniel Moody, a Christian philosopher and the author of The Flesh Made Word, explained in a Friday interview with The Christian Post that it's worth reminding ourselves that the purpose of a birth certificate is to capture truth in language, thereby connecting persons to laws — not only for the sake of the individual but for society as a whole.
"And in order for the birth certificate to perform its function, the recording of a person's sex is both necessary and sufficient," he said.
"X does not denote sex 'unknown.' Indeed, it is far more accurate to say it signifies 'I do not wish anybody to know my sex.' The new possibility has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with a destructive anti-body ideology. Anybody can self-identify their way out of the categories of male and female."
Read more about gender X birth certificates on The Christian Post.