This seems to be a huge conflict. According to the new passport laws, a person who hasn't had surgery can at the very least get a 2 year passport with the correct gender marker and if the doc feel you have received clinical treatment to become the other gender, you can get a full one. But then states can still require a higher standard for a much lower security ID. And why is this still required for the SS office? At what point is this country going to enter the 21st century and resolve this nonsense.. 

The States are always going to have the power to write the rules in their jurisdictions.  It's that Constitution thing. 

Quote from: tekla on September 16, 2011, 01:18:21 AM
The States are always going to have the power to write the rules in their jurisdictions.  It's that Constitution thing.

Not always. States can't have segregation laws. States can't deny interracial marriage. Many federal laws demand that states follow certain standards. At some point this nonsense with demanding a surgery letter is going to be deemed unconstitutional. Given they don't require it for passports now, it's going to be hard to argue that surgery is needed to make this identification change match a person.

So you're saying there should be nothing other than "because I said so"?

Quote from: tekla on September 16, 2011, 09:55:38 AM
So you're saying there should be nothing other than "because I said so"?

Did you read the passport requirements? It's not a "because I said so" regulation, it just doesn't require -genital surgery- for a doctor to establish that someone has changed their gender via clinical treatment. WPATH seems to be saying that GRS isn't a requirement for clinical gender change either. I just think that all government ID's should follow the same federal requirements that passports now have, including SS and state ID's. Not that my wanting this to happen will make it so..

(Tenth Amendment)  Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution details what duties the federal government will be responsible for under our new system of "balanced power." Anything not mentioned in Article 1, Sec. 8, is "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Unless gender identity protections are added at the federal level, there probably isn't going to be any standardization on ID gender markers.

But in the end, it's still 'because I said so' + money.  It's going to be like the California Medical Marijuana Law, anyone with $75 bucks can buy a diagnoses and get the card, the doctors will even 'suggest' (more like 'prompt') the correct thing to say (which turns out to be just about anything). 

The reason the Feds don't care about it, is because 'your current gender' does not matter to them, and they have all the information they need (and a lot more) anyway.

And, while some states might have a higher standard, others do not, any Federal law is going to written to the most regressive standards, not the most progressive ones.   As it is, changing the requirements for passport stuff is a matter of re-writing some administrative standards and publishing those changed in the Federal Register, what you are proposing is something that would take an actual law.  So that means that Congress would write it and debate it, and you are going to get something written by Steven King and Michelle Bachmann and Sam Brownback and the new standard will be along the lines of "you can change your gender when (our) god says it's OK."