National
State Dept. issues pro-trans policy for U.S. passports
‘Significant’ change correctly identifies gender
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (Blade photo by Michael Key)
A recent change at the State Department enabling transgender Americans to have their correct gender identified on U.S. passports is being hailed as “hugely significant.”
The change, unveiled June 10 by the State Department, mandates that U.S. passports reflect the appropriate gender of transgender people who present certification from a doctor saying they’ve undergone gender transition. Under previous rules, sexual reassignment surgery on genitalia was a prerequisite for gender change on a passport.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said the new policy is “hugely significant” and the “biggest administrative win to date.”
“As we’ve needed better and better ID — more and more consistent ID — it’s been harder and harder for trans people to get it,” she said. “This is a step in the right direction.”
If a transgender person is in the process of transitioning but hasn’t yet fully transitioned, a State Department rep said a temporary passport valid for two years would be issued. After the person has fully transitioned, the department would issue a passport that is valid for 10 years.
Keisling said the change enables transgender people to have an official source of identification that correctly identifies their gender, which she noted is important for transgender people who live in areas where they aren’t allowed to change their gender on other forms of identification.
She said that Tennessee, Ohio and Idaho, for example, are places where residents aren’t allowed to change their gender on their birth certifications.
“It means that when you go apply for a job, you have to out yourself, because you have to show them government-issued ID, which often is triggered by your birth certificate or your driver’s license,” Keisling said. “Now trans people in those states can use their passports.”
Keisling said the new change also helps national security and the identification process because “now you have people with consistent ID that makes sense for who they really are.”
“At border crossings, they’re not looking for genitals,” Keisling said. “They’re looking for guns and drugs — and that’s what they should be looking for.”
In a Blade interview, Michael Kirby, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said the policy came to the attention of the State Department in February.
Kirby said the National Center for Transgender Equality and other LGBT groups met with department officials and determined “the policy was out of date from what it should be.”
“Up until that time, we required a statement from a physician that there had been an operation to accomplish the transgender change,” he said. “We were told that’s not what current medical theory is.”
According to a State Department statement issued last week, the new policy is based on the standards of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an organization the American Medical Association recognizes as an authority in transgender issues.
Although the change still requires a statement from a medical physician noting that a person has undergone gender transition, Keisling said this certification could be based on different factors depending on the individual because of “modern understanding of what it means to be a transsexual.”
“Some people may just need hormone therapy, some people may need some kind of surgery,” Keisling said. “They may need surgery and not be able to afford surgery, and that’s taken into account by the standards of care that the medical profession has set about.”
Kirby said a certification from a physician must include, among other things, a medical license or certification number, contact information, a statement affirming that he or she is the attending physician and language noting the applicant “has had appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition to the new gender.”
“So it’s fairly simple,” Kirby said. “But it has to be a doctor-patient relationship, not a non-professional relationship.”
The State Department statement says officers who issue passports “will only ask appropriate questions” for applications to obtain information necessary to determine citizenship and identity.
Kirby said this guidance is to ensure officials won’t ask probing questions such as “Why did you do this,” “When did it happen,” or other inquiries that “are really not germane” to a transgender person’s passport application.
The new change comes about 18 months into the Obama administration and after about the same length of time that organizations, including HRC, advocated for the new change as a policy that could be made without a change in law.
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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