It turns out President Obama’s gender engineering rules makes both conservatives and progressives uncomfortable.
A bipartisan coalition of concerned citizens called Hands Across the Aisle, made up of “radical feminists, lesbians, Christians and conservatives,” recently penned a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to dismantle the previous administration's transgender agenda. They are specifically targeting Obama's “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs,” which allows men to be placed in programs and shelters that are supposed to be reserved for women. As the authors explain, the rule requires shelters to permit men who “claim to feel female.”
Sex, the group explains, should be the only categorization for placement in single-sex shelters.
As advocates for women, we are appalled at HUD’s disregard for women’s safety under this Rule. While members of many communities have specific religious or cultural objections to sharing mixed-sex accommodations, weighty concerns about privacy and safety in these circumstances are shared by women from all walks of life. Our opinions are informed by histories of exposure to predominantly male violence that some of us have in common with many homeless or abused women, particularly mothers.
To change the terms is dangerous to already vulnerable women, the group continues.
In adopting the Rule the prior administration ignored the disproportionate harmful effects on black and Hispanic women, poor women, and women who are victims of domestic violence.
The harms facilitated by the Rule will fall disproportionately on already-vulnerable women. Statistics reviewed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2016 showed that as many as 93 percent of mothers staying in homeless shelters are trauma survivors, often due to physical or sexual abuse, and multiple studies show that significant numbers of them (between 22% and 57%) are immediately homeless because of intimate partner violence.[8] According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “While women at all income levels experience domestic violence,” “[w]omen with household incomes of less than $7,500 are 7 times as likely as women with household incomes over $75,000 to experience domestic violence.”[9] Black and Hispanic mothers are particularly vulnerable.[10]
Carson is apt to listen to the group’s plea. As a renowned doctor, he has not been afraid to voice his opinion that one cannot change their genetics.
“We have known what a man is and what a woman is for thousands of years,” he told Katie Couric in July. There are biological markers that tell us whether we are male or female.”
This is not the first time ideologically opposite groups have teamed up to derail Obama’s dangerous gender identity rule. In January, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) joined forces with the Family Policy Alliance to challenge the president’s bathroom mandate.
(H/T Daily Signal)