Representative Nancy Mace has introduced the so-called Gender Delusion Disqualification Act, legislation designed to bar people diagnosed with gender dysphoria from certain sensitive federal positions and federally regulated certifications.
Apparently, Congress has solved inflation, housing, healthcare, gun violence, climate change, and every other pressing national concern and finally has time to determine which Americans are sufficiently gender-conforming to hold a government job.
The Human Rights Alliance condemns this proposal for what it is: discrimination dressed up in the language of public safety.
And for me, this one is particularly absurd.
I am an intersex, nonbinary person. My existence is not a political theory. It is not an ideology. It is certainly not a delusion. I have a chromosomal variation. Human biology did not consult Representative Mace before making me, which I realize may come as something of a disappointment.
Intersex people are particularly inconvenient to politicians who insist that human sex can always be reduced to two perfectly neat boxes. Biology is considerably more interesting than their campaign literature.
And gender dysphoria itself cannot rationally be treated as automatic proof that someone is incapable of performing sensitive work. The American Psychiatric Association explicitly notes that not every transgender person experiences gender dysphoria. A diagnosis describes an individual’s experience of clinically significant distress; it does not establish incompetence, dishonesty, instability, or inability to serve the public.
This bill therefore does something deeply dangerous: it takes a medical diagnosis associated with a marginalized population and turns it into a government employment disqualification.
We have seen this logic before.
When government begins deciding that an entire category of people is inherently too psychologically suspect to serve, hold credentials, or exercise professional responsibility, we have moved away from individualized assessment and toward state-sanctioned stigma.
Federal employees entrusted with sensitive responsibilities should absolutely meet legitimate standards of competence, judgment, integrity, and psychological fitness.
Being transgender, nonbinary, or intersex is not evidence that someone fails those standards.
If Representative Mace genuinely wants government employment based on merit rather than ideology, wonderful. We agree.
Then evaluate people on their merit.
The Human Rights Alliance calls upon members of Congress to reject H.R. 10319, upon civil-rights organizations to closely monitor its progress, and upon New Mexicans to contact their congressional delegation and demand opposition to legislation that converts identity and medical history into political weapons.
Our government should be determining whether people can do their jobs.
It should not be conducting congressional auditions for who is allowed to exist.
Biology Is Complicated
