It has been that way for thousands of years, of course, but it has now been that way for a few hours into the new Trump administration, too.
The changes under President Trump will come quickly in a rolling wave, Chris Gacek, the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for regulatory affairs, predicted on Washington Watch Monday.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Donald Trump said in his inauguration speech.
But how will he enact the policy in a country that was force fed the celebration of gender confusion for four years under the previous administration?
The military would be a good place to start.
“My sense is that the way President Trump thinks about things, it’s like the military would be the first place he does it,” Gacek told show host Tony Perkins.
Biden, just days into his term, signed an executive order reversing the Trump administration’s ban on transgenders serving openly in the military. Throughout the course of his term, transgenders were allowed to openly transition while serving. They were provided gender-manipulation procedures at taxpayer expense, and so were their dependents.
Military records for those affected by the previous transgender ban were corrected.
The executive order signed by Trump Monday does not specifically cite military personnel but addresses all federal employees. It took aim at gender ideology in all walks of life, specifically “defending women from gender ideology extremism” and “restoring biological truth to federal government.”
It specifically names the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
It doesn’t mention the Department of Defense, but it also doesn’t mention the Department of Education.
“When administering or enforcing sex-based distinctions, every agency and all Federal employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term “sex” and not “gender” in all applicable Federal policies and documents,” the order reads.
The order provides clear definitions of male and female and clarifies ages with definitions of man, woman, boy and girl.
There’s no status given for gender identity.
“Gender identity reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex,” the order says.
EO gets an assist from IWF
The order uses definitions first crafted by the Independent Women’s Forum, a nonprofit advocate group.
IWF was honored by The Heritage Foundation in 2022 for its “model legislation” protecting women and girls amid the rise of gender ideology. The group has helped that legislation become law in eight states.
“I’m incredibly proud of the groundwork that the team at Independent Women laid for today’s victory. As we have long argued, the United States is a nation of laws, not men. To have a system of laws, words must have meaning. Today, President Trump stopped the Left’s attempts to erase the concept of women as a separate sex,” IWF President Carrie Lukas said.
The order makes no specific mention of males on female sports teams, no specific mention of restrooms, locker rooms or other public dressing areas, but all can be easily understood in its broad language which instructs the Attorney General to “ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
The order specifically rescinded five Biden executive orders and any other “conflicting provisions” that may exist in previous presidential orders.
The heads of all federal agencies are instructed to rescind all documents produced by the Biden administration for the purpose of instructing and guiding employees on the topic of gender. There are 15 in all.
“The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality” tops the list. Others include “Supporting Transgender Youth in School”, “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families”, “Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students.”
A different interpretation
Whether the Trump administration will have a problem defending the order, if it faces a challenge relative to the Supreme Court case of Bostock vs. Clayton County in 2020, remains to be seen.
The order specifically mentions this case.
“The prior administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. This position is legally untenable and has harmed women,” the order states.
Gacek believes the administration is on solid legal ground.
“The Bostock ruling was about a private employer. The federal government may have more leeway with regard to the employees that it has in terms of setting terms and conditions, especially in areas like the military,” he said.
At the end of the day, you don’t have to be too old to remember when Trump’s executive order was the social norm and not shockingly abnormal.
“Until 20 years ago, everything was framed in terms of biological sex. It wasn't like we've never been in this world before. It's more like the strange new world that the Supreme Court and other institutions have created for us have created these problems. In a sense, using biological sex again would just be a reset to the way things should be,” Gacek said.
