r/neoliberal • u/ghhewh Anne Applebaum • Oct 06 '24
Restricted Texas DPS May Begin Reverting Trans People's Valid Drivers Licenses
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-dps-may-begin-reverting-trans210
u/MontusBatwing Trans Pride Oct 06 '24
There isn’t even an attempted justification for this. It’s just targeting trans people to make their lives worse. Evil.
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24
the cruelty is the point
more people need to realise that they’re not well-intentioned or anything they genuinely don’t care what happens to trans people
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u/Independent-Low-2398 Oct 06 '24
The original letter from the Texas Department of Public Safety in late August stated, "effective immediately, the department will not accept court orders or amended birth certificates that change the sex when it differs from the documentation already on file." It further explained that if someone presents a court order that includes both a name and sex marker change, the entire order would be considered invalid, preventing the trans person from even updating their name on their driver's license. Perhaps most troublingly, all trans people seeking such changes would have their name and information emailed to an internal email account, creating a defacto database of such people.
A new letter from DPS Director Steven C. McCraw to Attorney General Ken Paxton has now been made public. In the letter, McCraw poses clarifying questions that suggest the potential future actions the DPS may take in targeting transgender individuals in the state.
Toward the end of the letter, McCraw writes, "DPS may have altered many government sex records in mistaken reliance on court orders that either (a) lacked any basis in law or authority to bind DPS or (b) were not relevant proof under statutory authority to correct mistaken records of an individual's sex. On other occasions, when DPS has made an erroneous entry to a person's record, the agency has on its own initiative corrected such a mistake, including by issuing a new driver's license to the person concerned and directing the person to destroy the old license." He goes on to ask, "If DPS’s past changes to applicants’ ‘sex’ based on gender-change orders were inconsistent with state law, may DPS voluntarily correct its own introduction of inaccurate sex information?"
!ping SNEK&USA-TX&LGBT
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u/JoeChristmasUSA Mary Wollstonecraft Oct 06 '24
Ah, the land of small government
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u/LocallySourcedWeirdo YIMBY Oct 06 '24
But the cities are blue! Top Golf and ice houses. You won't even miss your rights.
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u/golf1052 Let me be clear | SEA organizer Oct 06 '24
We have Top Golf in Washington and we'll protect your rights.
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u/SpaceyCoffee Oct 06 '24
No one ever actually believed that. It was always code for “rules for thee but not for me”.
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u/Hilldawg4president John Rawls Oct 06 '24
Uh, "we will not accept a court order" isn't really how it works
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u/CriskCross Emma Lazarus Oct 06 '24
Wdym? Of course it is. They're the GOP, why let little things like the law stop them from being terrible, awful people?
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u/Zzyzx8 Trans Pride Oct 06 '24
Do these people even have a reasoning behind this stuff besides “we hate trans people”. I feel like republicans tend to try and have some moral high ground argument for their evil stuff like “pro life” or “only a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun”
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u/Aleriya Transmasculine Pride Oct 06 '24
Their goal is to be make it impossible to be stealth because trans people will be outed by their ID. That makes it easier to enforce bathroom bans and other anti-trans laws.
Transphobes often think it's immoral/unsafe for trans people to exist without disclosing our trans status. If trans people have the audacity to exist in public, the least we can do is wear a pink triangle so everyone knows to keep their children away.
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u/Independent-Low-2398 Oct 06 '24
I think this is it. There's a lot (like a lot a lot) of weird stuff going on re: conservatives and trans people but their all-consuming fear of passing trans people is one of the weirdest. They'd 100% pass a "duty to disclose" law if they could.
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u/allbusiness512 John Locke Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
None. The idea is to make it basically impossible to go out in public without outing your status as a trans person so that the government and others can fully discriminate against you.
I'm just glad we can finally openly say that the GOP party's standard bearers (Trump, Vance, and other state GOP leadership like Abbott and Paxton) are in fact at minimum discriminatory against transgender people (if not just full blown bigots). Used to be too many people who would try to both sides the whole issue, when in reality anyone with any logic could figure out where the anti-trans gender legislation and rhetoric was leading to.
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Oct 06 '24
I’m sorry but anyone who hasn’t deduced the Republican Party’s opposition to trans people being rooted purely in bigotry in the last 10 years has got to be stupid. Or living under a rock.
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u/drcombatwombat2 Milton Friedman Oct 06 '24
Many on the religious right hate gay and trans people so much they would hate their own children if they came out. All the anti trans stuff is to ensure their children never even see a trans person and never even thinks about becoming one
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u/AnnoyedCrustacean NATO Oct 07 '24 edited Oct 07 '24
I would love if a daughter decided to become a boy (BEST SEX, BOYZ RULE!), but I would feel remorse if I hadn't taught my son how amazing being a dude is, and he decided to become a woman
I imagine women feel the same in the other direction
It feels like a failure as a parent, representing your sex
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u/Full_Distribution874 YIMBY Oct 07 '24
Bro, you dropped the /s
Seriously though, it isn't "deciding" to be trans, nor is it because of you failing to convince your child that your gender is the better one
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u/AnnoyedCrustacean NATO Oct 08 '24
nor is it because of you failing to convince your child that your gender is the better one
Of course it is. Why do Trans women transition? They feel they aren't getting their emotional needs met, they want to wear women's clothes, and generally want to be that sex
Without realizing how amazing it is to be a guy without having to worry about emotions, fashion trends, looking pretty, or periods and getting molested by men.
You don't choose to be gay, but you do choose to be trans. That's literally why it's called transitioning
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u/Full_Distribution874 YIMBY Oct 08 '24
Tell me you have no fucking idea what you're talking about without telling me. Jesus please grant your wayward son wisdom.
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u/soapinmouth George Soros Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Other than the "trans people are an abomination and not real" response, the one I have heard is "I believe in science and scientifically they are a man not a woman", and "This movement to remove biological genders is hurting science on gender issues". Trying to be neutral here it's true there are some studies I have seen that were flawed due to overzealous accommodation of trans views, but it's not a major concern, greatly overexaggerated, and seems like people just justifying their own transphobia with anything they can find to not admit it just makes them feel icky seeing a man dressed as a woman.
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u/AnnoyedCrustacean NATO Oct 07 '24
I understand keeping birth certificates as biological for data collection purposes (why are more women being born? Not actually the case, just an increase in transitions), but driver's licenses or modern ID should reflect who you are in the moment
Nope, just spite
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u/groupbot The ping will always get through Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Pinged USA-TX (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
Pinged SNEK (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
Pinged LGBT (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
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u/ModernMaroon Friedrich Hayek Oct 06 '24
This is the danger of unelected bureaucrats. They don’t always go your way.
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u/groovygrasshoppa Oct 06 '24
Hate to break it to you but they are merely taking orders from elected politicians.
Elections are not panacea.
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u/Electronic_Dance_640 Oct 06 '24
My dad still believes anti trans laws are just about kids who are too young to understand what transition really is and that they can wait til they’re 18 and then do whatever they want
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u/Sachsen1977 Oct 06 '24
It would be nice if they could focus this amount of energy on reducing wait times.
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u/WasteReserve8886 r/place '22: GlobalTribe Battalion Oct 07 '24
As time goes on, it feels like transphobia is becoming more and more blatant, less couched in things like "Think of the kids" and "Think of the cis women"
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24
idk why people move to places like Texas when NJ (Jersey City) and Washington (Seattle) exist. Like if you already live there, okay I kinda get it but why would you MOVE there?
Like we have YIMBY states and cities outside of Texas. I also don’t think giving up your rights is worth slightly cheaper housing. Actually now that I think about it, Seattle has higher salaries than Austin and about the same rent. (Also wEaThEr isn’t a reason-both cities have terrible weather- you just gotta choose between rainy misery or lethal heat)
But more libs moving to Texas is the only way to make Blexas a reality, so I guess it’s a temporary sacrifice?
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u/Whatswrongbaby9 Oct 06 '24
Number one issue I see for people moving (who aren't otherwise attracted to Texas politics) is housing costs. Median home price in Dallas is about 400K less than the median home price in Seattle
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u/topicality John Rawls Oct 06 '24
I think Matt Y had a take that basically boiled down to, "if liberals and progressives truly believe what they say they do, they need to find a way to make it cheaper to live in their cities/ states. It does no one any good to talk about trans rights and welcoming refugees if your fellow Americans can't even afford to leave their Republican states cause your housing is too expensive"
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Oct 06 '24
[deleted]
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u/Whatswrongbaby9 Oct 06 '24
That's the appeal though, a mortgage in Texas on paper looks the same as monthly rent in Seattle. I live near Seattle, for a lot of reasons I don't want to move to Texas, but for people who want the single family detached home that's not possible around Seattle anymore unless you can afford six figure down payment and carry a high six figure mortgage.
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Oct 06 '24
[deleted]
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u/Approximation_Doctor George Soros Oct 06 '24
Some people want to know how much they're paying for housing a year from now, or want to hang pictures on the wall.
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u/Whatswrongbaby9 Oct 06 '24
Nothing is wrong with it. I have friends that have been renting a SFH in Ballard for coming up on 15+ years now. They are mildly terrified because their income has not kept pace with the increase in home values, and every year their owner (who is the son of the owner they originally signed with) might decide to raise their rent to market rate.
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u/FuckFashMods Oct 06 '24
Nothing, but you still don't own it and you still have to deal with a landlord.
It's nice being able to change your house to being more comfortable, and most landlords are lazy turds.
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u/ihatemendingwalls Papism with NATO Characteristics Oct 06 '24
people want an asset that will appreciate because local governments have manipulated the market in their favor
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u/jaydec02 Trans Pride Oct 06 '24
No one wants to rent forever. No one wants their only ownership option being a condo in a downtown area.
The overwhelming majority of Americans want a modest or large house in a quiet suburb or quiet residential neighborhood where they can drive to a downtown or shopping center nearby if they want a taste of city life.
Texas has very cheap homes and good jobs near their major cities. Most people are fine making trade offs on things they frankly don’t care about (even liberals don’t care that much about trans issues)
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u/Ok-Armadillo-2119 Oct 06 '24
I also don’t think giving up your rights is worth slightly cheaper housing.
I think it's disingenuous to say that it's only "slightly" cheaper. The average 1BR apartment in Dallas is $1400/month and in Seattle the average 1 BR apartment is over $2000/month.
Most people are going to prefer living in an environment with cheaper housing and higher living standards.
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24
In Dallas tho. In Austin it’s also ~$2200 much like Seattle.
But you have to live in Dallas where food and quality of life sucks.
Also aren’t we beating the NIMBYs slowly but surely?
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u/Multi_21_Seb_RBR Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Seattle is expensive tbf (and am potentially going to be forced to move out of Seattle within the next 3-5 years), but yeah I would never ever move to Texas or any state that has extreme anti-abortion laws (like a total ban or a 6-week ban). Unless said red state city is St. Louis honestly.
While some dudes on this sub may say and feel otherwise, I don't think my position on that is "hysterical" or "too terminally online".
I feel for those who live in states like that and want to move out but can't or find it hard to do so.
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u/shiny_aegislash Oct 06 '24
Because most people are not transgender and don't care about these kinds of things. I'd imagine very few people moving to Texas care about this... This sub and other online liberal forums make pro-trans policy seem much more popular than it actually is in reality (or anti-trans policy seeming more unpopular)
If the CoL is cheaper and there are good job/housing opportunities, that matters much more to people
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24
What about women and abortion rights?
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u/YaGetSkeeted0n Lone Star Lib Oct 06 '24
They reckon they can travel out of state for one.
Most people just care about two things: jobs and the cost of living. Everything else is secondary or tertiary to that.
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
But you have better jobs in Seattle or especially Jersey City, which is right next door to the capital of the world
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u/Approximation_Doctor George Soros Oct 06 '24
jobs and the cost of living
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I did the maths and it makes more sense to live in Seattle or jersey city if you’re in tech or finance
Probably construction and education too
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u/Approximation_Doctor George Soros Oct 06 '24
True, working in tech and finance should encompass everyone in this sub
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u/Hexadecimal15 NASA Oct 06 '24
look it’s also true for construction ok
people move to texas because cheap housing and that’s it.
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u/jeb_brush PhD Pseudoscientifc Computing Oct 06 '24
If your skills are in chemical engineering or mining engineering, blue cities in blue states aren't going to be your job hubs. If you're in academia, jobs are so competitive that you have almost no leverage over which state you're going to end up in.
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u/YaGetSkeeted0n Lone Star Lib Oct 06 '24
Definitely not in my field. My equivalent job with the NYC government would be a pay cut 😭 and that’s before you factor in the rent!
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u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman Oct 06 '24
You're losing me at the comparisons between NJ/Seattle and Texas. How are they related?
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u/bashar_al_assad Verified Account Oct 06 '24
NJ and Texas both have football teams in the NFC East.
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u/EfficientJuggernaut YIMBY Oct 06 '24
Libs aren’t moving to Texas it’s conservatives. Native texans lean a lot more dem than the ones that move in. But yeah you definitely have a point. Me and my bf are relocating out of Florida. Unlike Texas where the dems continue to gain seats in the legislature at least, the dems encountered their biggest loss in decades and we’re just sick of the far right here
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u/affnn Emma Lazarus Oct 06 '24
Are the mods awake? I feel like being excessively partisan about this.
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