Last month, Texas stopped processing drivers license gender changes, even with a court order. Now, a letter shows they may begin reverting valid licenses for trans people who previously changed it.
Reading this has made me sick to my stomach. Why not just leave people be? I’m so angry that my home state continues to be the most embarrassing group of politicians. These people need to be voted out. As a gender affirming therapist, I am angry, sad and frustrated that my clients are having to face such hateful actions.
It's insidious! Of course the politicians will not hold the gun, the rock, or the baseball bat. It will be their ignorant minions. When I no longer matched the M on my drivers license it was, at times, agonizing to get behind the wheel worried about a traffic stop or needing to show my license to rent a car.
I am a proud Minnesotan with an F on my license thanks to former Govenor Dayton, Walz's immediate predecessor.
You're lucky you live in Minnesota, as I am lucky to live in NYC. I have not experienced transphobia (or rather, transmisia) even once whilst walking the streets or taking the subway. The only transmisia I experienced was by trolls on the internet, and besides, everyone else defended me and trans people in general where it occurred, so I felt safe.
As a 72 year old trans man who waited till I was 63 to transition, I have spent my retirement years working with our local PFLAG chapter and trying to educate people on gender. I am tired and disspirited, so keep that in mind as you read this. People love to step up and call themselves allies for the trans community. Where are they? I write letters to the editor, I show up at school board meetings-where are the local "affirming" churches who pledge that we are all so welcome? Why aren't they writing letters, going out to face the people who attack us for just being? The trans community cannot do this by themselves. The assaults on our very being take a toll. We need others to stand up and call bullshit. Our trans kids deserve the vocal outrage that must be out there somewhere. I certainly hope that our allies will vote and work hard to get out the vote. I hope they will name us as a reason to vote. It isn't just about abortion, it is about our right to live. Please be willing to name us, at least before the genocide starts.
There is a reason my profile picture says "Bodily Autonomy is non-negotiable" alongside the words "abortion" and "transition": reproductive rights and trans rights are not related issues or similar issues but the same issue, and that is the aforementioned bodily autonomy. Also, the same fascists who are against abortion rights for cisgender women are also against rights for us trans folks. Like I said, *the same issue*!!
Allies are everywhere, but places like Texas are gerrymandered to give Republicans absolute control. Which negates only the moat extreme state intervention.
They're literally ignoring court orders because the group of "law and order" knows no one in the state can force them to comply.
It took the National Guard to force integration in the south. I hope it never comes to that. But who knows.
There is hope though. if it weren't for allies then Republicans would have included dozens of anti-trans legislation in must pass funding bills at the federal level.
Just imagine the amount of wasted resources going into the (implementation) of these bullshit policies. These resources could have been spent on increasing the GDP per capita thus the wages and living standard of the average citizens. No, they chose to pointlessly harm a minority and sh*t on the head of the majority, ignoring their desire for a better life. All they have to offer is scapegoating, convenient lies and empty promises.
Just like in my homeland. All the hate propaganda about gender diverse people while the average citizen cannot even make a living due to the failed economic policies of our political leaders. This system is uniquely bad and anti-human.
> All the hate propaganda about gender diverse people while the average citizen cannot even make a living due to the failed economic policies of our political leaders.
To be honest, I thought you were talking about the United States until I realized who the author was!
Trans people in this country are the canaries in the coal mine for the loss of rights that the GOP envisions should they ever gain full control again. Mark my words, it will NOT end with trans people.
I wish I could say that I'm surprised by these outrageous practices. I'm not. Another day, another reason to despise the GOP and their voters (aka, their enablers).
It's not just their voters, it's also that the GOP is gerrymandered, and that there's voter suppression so the GOP is more coronated rather than elected.
I am in a race right now. Court ordered name change is Nov 12th and can not change my name and gender on my FL DL until then. Have my doctors note but have to have a name change to do it. Hopefully, I will still be able to change it Nov. 12th at the DMV. :( Filling for my name change and F on the passport the same day lol.
My daughter lives in Texas and my trans son will not go visit because they are frankly scared. They were forced to move from Minnesota to North Dakota because of circumstances.(we live there.) and it’s one of the worst states for transgender people and I hate it. My daughter and her wife live in Minnesota and do not like to come visit us in North Dakota.(border city.)
I’ve been given permission to advocate, but my kids just wanna live their lives in peace
I live in MN and my sister lives in Texas. I will not visit her for exactly this reason. Frankly Idk what would even be safe there for me to do. I'd only visit there if I was with other trans folks who know the lay of the land and the laws there.
Are we no longer the UNITED States of America? If anyone asks me my nationality I think I'll proudly call myself a Minnesotan rather than risk someone thinking I might be from Texas or Florida or... I certainly will be avoiding any risk of needing to travel in these places.
Should also mention that in Kentucky, they quietly stopped accepting passports as proof of gender marker, and now require court order, amended bc or surgeon's letter (KY already requires surgical sex reassignment to amend bc).
This is horrific and cruel, but there seem to be limits as to how far they can take this. correct? Say, if someone does a valid sex marker change in another state then moves to Texas and applies for a new DL with the correct marker already in place, Texas wouldn’t know and the individual would be okay, correct?
I don't think we can assume that anyone would be safe. I was able to get my gender marker changed in VA (no name change as of yet) but I wouldn't put it past Texas to change it back. One reason I want to get my passport renewed is because that's a federal identification document and you can have your chosen gender marker.
I agree with Jen on this. Texas might not be able to change a license from another State, but they could very well say that licenses from States that change gender markers are invalid in Texas and subject to seizure with jail time for one in possession of such licenses.
I think they will have a hard time getting everyone. They probably won't be able to even catch anyone who changed theirs before the last couple years. If your passport or birth certificate is from another state and updated, there is probably almost nothing they can do about it.
I have a CDL class a driver's license. When I worked in construction perspective employers could easily pull up my driver record in a matter of minutes going back 10 years or more. This information is commonly shared between states motor vehicle agencies. Way back when I started driving you could hold more than one license if you had a license in a different state those licenses were kept separate but now the whole system has been federalized and information flows easily from one agency to the next.
CDL licenses or commercial driver licenses are subject to more scrutiny than other types of licenses because they are regulated by the federal government and subject to other federal agencies like OSHA but the information system for sharing information easily between one states motor vehicle agency and another's is firmly entrenched at this point.
But again, how would they know? They would have to investigate the out-of-state DL sex marker history of literally everyone applying for a DL in Texas in order to catch the rare changes - and that’s assuming they’d be able to access the past DL information from whatever the other state is.
In addition to what allie said, they'd likely begin with profiling anyone stopped by the police/authorities or whom appears to be Trans and go from there. I.O.W. no one would be safe from that sort of profiling (e.g. what happened to Imane Kehlif at the recent Olympics)
The Texas attorney general has tried to obtain the health records of trans patients' treatment in other states. The HIPA laws have provided a firewall but I'm sure he would not stop at trying to obtain DMV records as well.
My attorney friend has said to only answer exactly what you're asked, never volunteer information, and to respond truthfully . . . or to remain silent.
I would imagine they'd do what FL is supposedly doing and just refuse to issue it with that data. Unless you're stealth, they probably will give you a hard time.
Perhaps the most frightening thing about this is the almost casual declaration by the Abbott-Paxton regime that it will ignore court orders it doesn't like. Not resist, not appeal, not challenge, ignore. I almost expect that any day they will refer to some court order by wondering aloud "how many divisions" does the judge have.
There is a reason this new wave of oppression started with bathrooms and sports, the areas where the reactionaries thought they could best generate cocked eyebrows toward trans folks for the sake of "protecting our girls." Then came book bans to "protect the children OMG THE CHILDREN!!"
Drivers' licenses seem to be the new front, I strongly suspect driven by the fact that so many, too many, courts, have found that driving is a "privilege," not a right, so states can put pretty much whatever requirements and limitations on it they want without running afoul of civil rights laws.
Every justification for, every approval of, oppression is used to justify the next target. Now it's to the point where courts feel free to issue utterly childish opinions (such as the 11th CCOA one mentioned by Erin) without fear of being mocked and states like Texas (doubtless soon to be imitated by others) feel free to ignore those which aren't.
This has been mostly a red state strategy going back to the civil war. Basically the sentiment is that the federal government can't tell us what to do in our state. Even states like California sometimes buck federal law like it did with marijuana. In my opinion the side that's right is the one favoring personal liberty and freedom with the caveat of course that that freedom does not impinge on someone else's freedom. I think being and living as a trans person passes this test as we do no harm to other's freedom or rights by our existence. The fact that the sight of a trans person makes others recoil in horror is not part of the argument. That is not harm.
Interposition, the notion that a state can place itself between the federal government and local matters such that federal law does not apply there, predates the civil war (although cries of "states' rights" were loud in the lead-up to it, as they were again during the civil rights struggles of the '50s and '60s). It wasn't settled as a legal matter until 1869.
When California legalized medical marijuana in 1969, OTOH, it didn't say federal law didn't apply in CA but rather that the state would not enforce it. If the feds wanted to punish anyone in CA in relation to medical pot, they'd have to do it themselves. (Which they certainly threatened to do numerous times, although I'm not sure if or how forcefully they ever followed through. I do know that by 2015 they'd given up on the idea with regard to medical marijuana, although not with recreational use.)
My point here, however, is that what we're seeing goes beyond "states' rights." Paxton is not claiming federal law doesn't apply, but that no law applies; not that they can ignore orders from federal courts, but they can ignore orders from any court, that they can at their will place their actions beyond legal review. Which raises the "how many divisions" question: How does a court actually enforce its orders if those responsible for such enforcement simply tell it to eff off? And while you are clearly right that trans folks' existence harms no one, how does that help if reactionary laws are effectively beyond legal challenge because any favorable result can be ignored without consequence?
To be clear, I still have hope, in fact the conviction, that things will get better, that we are living in a reactionary time, a fear-driven reaction to the changes we have seen and are seeing, a time that once survived will have shown advancement, a conviction that, to quote what has almost become a cliche but nonetheless is spot on, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.
But the time between now and then is not going to be easy. And the more we are aware of, the better to resist, the now, the sooner it will be the then.
I'm not sure what has changed since the last time DPS told them they couldn't tell whether gender marker changes were clerical or court order. They didn't start retaining documents until around 2022 at all and they never retained the court order as far as I'm aware. It probably won't be impossible to track down many trans people who changed their genders on their DL, but they will have to go to other state agencies and investigate each potential trans citizen. I don't put it past them to try, though. Or maybe they plan to overturn every license with a gender marker change that they have records of and make the clerical error people come in to fix theirs back, but they still won't be able to catch everyone, because they have never had to system to track the changes until very recently.
I worry that this will just empower law enforcement to make their own judgments about who "looks trans" and who doesn't, and make life hell for a lot of people. It'll be another "papers please" situation. Forcing people to out themselves or putting them in a position where they have to defend their existence to a bunch of bigots. There is no way this ends well.
That is undoubtedly part of it. The same people who want to force trans people out of society altogether also want to force everyone else to conform to rigid, subjective gender roles, and if given free license to transvestigate anyone they please, would gleefully use that ability to harass and persecute anyone they felt wasn't "traditional" enough for their liking.
The police being the police, particularly in Good 'Ole Boy Country, I also expect they'd use it as an excuse to commit sexual assault under the guise of "verifying the suspect's gender."
It's not supposed to end well. That, as I'm sure you realize, is the point. It's part of making being trans so difficult, so risky, presenting such constant threat, that the pain of living a self-imposed life of hiding, of denial, of concealment, becomes preferable.
I have compared what the reactionaries want to do to trans folks to an oubliette, a medieval prison cell where prisoners were thrown and then "forgotten." (The name comes from the French "oublier," meaning "to forget.") They want it to be as if trans folks simply do not exist. Not legally, not politically, not socially, "forgotten" like a bad dream.
Oh, and for any "LGB without the T" useful idiots out there, don't imagine for a minute, for a millisecond, that if the reactionaries succeed in "forgetting" trans folks, they will not turn their baleful gaze to you next. George Will laid out the ultimate, the overarching, intent some years ago, writing that "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."
I'm in south Texas. I just got my name and gender marker changed in July after jumping through all of the hoops, waiting 4 months and finally getting my court order to go to DPS and jump through their hoops. I will fight this if they try to reverse it. I'll do whatever I legally can and even sue DPS if I can find a lawyer to do it. Until then I'll wait it out. Again.
They will not stop until they are removed from power. There is no more, less, or other to the matter.
Reading this has made me sick to my stomach. Why not just leave people be? I’m so angry that my home state continues to be the most embarrassing group of politicians. These people need to be voted out. As a gender affirming therapist, I am angry, sad and frustrated that my clients are having to face such hateful actions.
The GOP wants to kill Transgender people. That's what's in store if Donald Trump were to regain the white house.
It's insidious! Of course the politicians will not hold the gun, the rock, or the baseball bat. It will be their ignorant minions. When I no longer matched the M on my drivers license it was, at times, agonizing to get behind the wheel worried about a traffic stop or needing to show my license to rent a car.
I am a proud Minnesotan with an F on my license thanks to former Govenor Dayton, Walz's immediate predecessor.
You're lucky you live in Minnesota, as I am lucky to live in NYC. I have not experienced transphobia (or rather, transmisia) even once whilst walking the streets or taking the subway. The only transmisia I experienced was by trolls on the internet, and besides, everyone else defended me and trans people in general where it occurred, so I felt safe.
As a 72 year old trans man who waited till I was 63 to transition, I have spent my retirement years working with our local PFLAG chapter and trying to educate people on gender. I am tired and disspirited, so keep that in mind as you read this. People love to step up and call themselves allies for the trans community. Where are they? I write letters to the editor, I show up at school board meetings-where are the local "affirming" churches who pledge that we are all so welcome? Why aren't they writing letters, going out to face the people who attack us for just being? The trans community cannot do this by themselves. The assaults on our very being take a toll. We need others to stand up and call bullshit. Our trans kids deserve the vocal outrage that must be out there somewhere. I certainly hope that our allies will vote and work hard to get out the vote. I hope they will name us as a reason to vote. It isn't just about abortion, it is about our right to live. Please be willing to name us, at least before the genocide starts.
There is a reason my profile picture says "Bodily Autonomy is non-negotiable" alongside the words "abortion" and "transition": reproductive rights and trans rights are not related issues or similar issues but the same issue, and that is the aforementioned bodily autonomy. Also, the same fascists who are against abortion rights for cisgender women are also against rights for us trans folks. Like I said, *the same issue*!!
Allies are everywhere, but places like Texas are gerrymandered to give Republicans absolute control. Which negates only the moat extreme state intervention.
They're literally ignoring court orders because the group of "law and order" knows no one in the state can force them to comply.
It took the National Guard to force integration in the south. I hope it never comes to that. But who knows.
There is hope though. if it weren't for allies then Republicans would have included dozens of anti-trans legislation in must pass funding bills at the federal level.
Just imagine the amount of wasted resources going into the (implementation) of these bullshit policies. These resources could have been spent on increasing the GDP per capita thus the wages and living standard of the average citizens. No, they chose to pointlessly harm a minority and sh*t on the head of the majority, ignoring their desire for a better life. All they have to offer is scapegoating, convenient lies and empty promises.
These policies are used precisely so they can distract from the masses their failed policies that only take from the many and give to the few.
Just like in my homeland. All the hate propaganda about gender diverse people while the average citizen cannot even make a living due to the failed economic policies of our political leaders. This system is uniquely bad and anti-human.
> All the hate propaganda about gender diverse people while the average citizen cannot even make a living due to the failed economic policies of our political leaders.
To be honest, I thought you were talking about the United States until I realized who the author was!
Trans people in this country are the canaries in the coal mine for the loss of rights that the GOP envisions should they ever gain full control again. Mark my words, it will NOT end with trans people.
I wish I could say that I'm surprised by these outrageous practices. I'm not. Another day, another reason to despise the GOP and their voters (aka, their enablers).
It's not just their voters, it's also that the GOP is gerrymandered, and that there's voter suppression so the GOP is more coronated rather than elected.
Welp, just ~5 weeks until we find out whether or not the genocide is going national. This year sure is 𝘧𝘶𝘯.
I am in a race right now. Court ordered name change is Nov 12th and can not change my name and gender on my FL DL until then. Have my doctors note but have to have a name change to do it. Hopefully, I will still be able to change it Nov. 12th at the DMV. :( Filling for my name change and F on the passport the same day lol.
My daughter lives in Texas and my trans son will not go visit because they are frankly scared. They were forced to move from Minnesota to North Dakota because of circumstances.(we live there.) and it’s one of the worst states for transgender people and I hate it. My daughter and her wife live in Minnesota and do not like to come visit us in North Dakota.(border city.)
I’ve been given permission to advocate, but my kids just wanna live their lives in peace
I live in MN and my sister lives in Texas. I will not visit her for exactly this reason. Frankly Idk what would even be safe there for me to do. I'd only visit there if I was with other trans folks who know the lay of the land and the laws there.
Are we no longer the UNITED States of America? If anyone asks me my nationality I think I'll proudly call myself a Minnesotan rather than risk someone thinking I might be from Texas or Florida or... I certainly will be avoiding any risk of needing to travel in these places.
Should also mention that in Kentucky, they quietly stopped accepting passports as proof of gender marker, and now require court order, amended bc or surgeon's letter (KY already requires surgical sex reassignment to amend bc).
This is horrific and cruel, but there seem to be limits as to how far they can take this. correct? Say, if someone does a valid sex marker change in another state then moves to Texas and applies for a new DL with the correct marker already in place, Texas wouldn’t know and the individual would be okay, correct?
I don't think we can assume that anyone would be safe. I was able to get my gender marker changed in VA (no name change as of yet) but I wouldn't put it past Texas to change it back. One reason I want to get my passport renewed is because that's a federal identification document and you can have your chosen gender marker.
I agree with Jen on this. Texas might not be able to change a license from another State, but they could very well say that licenses from States that change gender markers are invalid in Texas and subject to seizure with jail time for one in possession of such licenses.
Yes, or guilty of fraud like in Florida.
I think they will have a hard time getting everyone. They probably won't be able to even catch anyone who changed theirs before the last couple years. If your passport or birth certificate is from another state and updated, there is probably almost nothing they can do about it.
I have a CDL class a driver's license. When I worked in construction perspective employers could easily pull up my driver record in a matter of minutes going back 10 years or more. This information is commonly shared between states motor vehicle agencies. Way back when I started driving you could hold more than one license if you had a license in a different state those licenses were kept separate but now the whole system has been federalized and information flows easily from one agency to the next.
CDL licenses or commercial driver licenses are subject to more scrutiny than other types of licenses because they are regulated by the federal government and subject to other federal agencies like OSHA but the information system for sharing information easily between one states motor vehicle agency and another's is firmly entrenched at this point.
I want to say Florida is doing something along those lines too.
But again, how would they know? They would have to investigate the out-of-state DL sex marker history of literally everyone applying for a DL in Texas in order to catch the rare changes - and that’s assuming they’d be able to access the past DL information from whatever the other state is.
In addition to what allie said, they'd likely begin with profiling anyone stopped by the police/authorities or whom appears to be Trans and go from there. I.O.W. no one would be safe from that sort of profiling (e.g. what happened to Imane Kehlif at the recent Olympics)
The Texas attorney general has tried to obtain the health records of trans patients' treatment in other states. The HIPA laws have provided a firewall but I'm sure he would not stop at trying to obtain DMV records as well.
I certainly wouldn’t ask or out yourself. Your best response is to say nothing.
My attorney friend has said to only answer exactly what you're asked, never volunteer information, and to respond truthfully . . . or to remain silent.
Plead the fifth!
That’s what remaining silent is.
I would imagine they'd do what FL is supposedly doing and just refuse to issue it with that data. Unless you're stealth, they probably will give you a hard time.
Perhaps the most frightening thing about this is the almost casual declaration by the Abbott-Paxton regime that it will ignore court orders it doesn't like. Not resist, not appeal, not challenge, ignore. I almost expect that any day they will refer to some court order by wondering aloud "how many divisions" does the judge have.
There is a reason this new wave of oppression started with bathrooms and sports, the areas where the reactionaries thought they could best generate cocked eyebrows toward trans folks for the sake of "protecting our girls." Then came book bans to "protect the children OMG THE CHILDREN!!"
Drivers' licenses seem to be the new front, I strongly suspect driven by the fact that so many, too many, courts, have found that driving is a "privilege," not a right, so states can put pretty much whatever requirements and limitations on it they want without running afoul of civil rights laws.
Every justification for, every approval of, oppression is used to justify the next target. Now it's to the point where courts feel free to issue utterly childish opinions (such as the 11th CCOA one mentioned by Erin) without fear of being mocked and states like Texas (doubtless soon to be imitated by others) feel free to ignore those which aren't.
Buckle up, folks, we are in for hard times.
This has been mostly a red state strategy going back to the civil war. Basically the sentiment is that the federal government can't tell us what to do in our state. Even states like California sometimes buck federal law like it did with marijuana. In my opinion the side that's right is the one favoring personal liberty and freedom with the caveat of course that that freedom does not impinge on someone else's freedom. I think being and living as a trans person passes this test as we do no harm to other's freedom or rights by our existence. The fact that the sight of a trans person makes others recoil in horror is not part of the argument. That is not harm.
Interposition, the notion that a state can place itself between the federal government and local matters such that federal law does not apply there, predates the civil war (although cries of "states' rights" were loud in the lead-up to it, as they were again during the civil rights struggles of the '50s and '60s). It wasn't settled as a legal matter until 1869.
When California legalized medical marijuana in 1969, OTOH, it didn't say federal law didn't apply in CA but rather that the state would not enforce it. If the feds wanted to punish anyone in CA in relation to medical pot, they'd have to do it themselves. (Which they certainly threatened to do numerous times, although I'm not sure if or how forcefully they ever followed through. I do know that by 2015 they'd given up on the idea with regard to medical marijuana, although not with recreational use.)
My point here, however, is that what we're seeing goes beyond "states' rights." Paxton is not claiming federal law doesn't apply, but that no law applies; not that they can ignore orders from federal courts, but they can ignore orders from any court, that they can at their will place their actions beyond legal review. Which raises the "how many divisions" question: How does a court actually enforce its orders if those responsible for such enforcement simply tell it to eff off? And while you are clearly right that trans folks' existence harms no one, how does that help if reactionary laws are effectively beyond legal challenge because any favorable result can be ignored without consequence?
To be clear, I still have hope, in fact the conviction, that things will get better, that we are living in a reactionary time, a fear-driven reaction to the changes we have seen and are seeing, a time that once survived will have shown advancement, a conviction that, to quote what has almost become a cliche but nonetheless is spot on, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.
But the time between now and then is not going to be easy. And the more we are aware of, the better to resist, the now, the sooner it will be the then.
I'm not sure what has changed since the last time DPS told them they couldn't tell whether gender marker changes were clerical or court order. They didn't start retaining documents until around 2022 at all and they never retained the court order as far as I'm aware. It probably won't be impossible to track down many trans people who changed their genders on their DL, but they will have to go to other state agencies and investigate each potential trans citizen. I don't put it past them to try, though. Or maybe they plan to overturn every license with a gender marker change that they have records of and make the clerical error people come in to fix theirs back, but they still won't be able to catch everyone, because they have never had to system to track the changes until very recently.
I worry that this will just empower law enforcement to make their own judgments about who "looks trans" and who doesn't, and make life hell for a lot of people. It'll be another "papers please" situation. Forcing people to out themselves or putting them in a position where they have to defend their existence to a bunch of bigots. There is no way this ends well.
That is undoubtedly part of it. The same people who want to force trans people out of society altogether also want to force everyone else to conform to rigid, subjective gender roles, and if given free license to transvestigate anyone they please, would gleefully use that ability to harass and persecute anyone they felt wasn't "traditional" enough for their liking.
The police being the police, particularly in Good 'Ole Boy Country, I also expect they'd use it as an excuse to commit sexual assault under the guise of "verifying the suspect's gender."
Yeah. No question this is an escalation.
As I said earlier, the Nazis, or Texas GOP (but I repeat myself), want to kill transgender people like us.
It's not supposed to end well. That, as I'm sure you realize, is the point. It's part of making being trans so difficult, so risky, presenting such constant threat, that the pain of living a self-imposed life of hiding, of denial, of concealment, becomes preferable.
I have compared what the reactionaries want to do to trans folks to an oubliette, a medieval prison cell where prisoners were thrown and then "forgotten." (The name comes from the French "oublier," meaning "to forget.") They want it to be as if trans folks simply do not exist. Not legally, not politically, not socially, "forgotten" like a bad dream.
Oh, and for any "LGB without the T" useful idiots out there, don't imagine for a minute, for a millisecond, that if the reactionaries succeed in "forgetting" trans folks, they will not turn their baleful gaze to you next. George Will laid out the ultimate, the overarching, intent some years ago, writing that "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."
I'm in south Texas. I just got my name and gender marker changed in July after jumping through all of the hoops, waiting 4 months and finally getting my court order to go to DPS and jump through their hoops. I will fight this if they try to reverse it. I'll do whatever I legally can and even sue DPS if I can find a lawyer to do it. Until then I'll wait it out. Again.