A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Birch Wiley
DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
an erasure of an executive order
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept. Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.= Sec. 2. Policy and Definitions. It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy: (a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.” (b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell. (f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body. (g) “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. Sec. 3. Recognizing Women Are Biologically Distinct From Men. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this order. (b) Each agency and all Federal employees shall enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes. Each agency should therefore give the terms. “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” the meanings set forth in section 2 of this order when interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications. (c) 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. (d) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined under section 2 of this order; and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report Federal employees’ sex, as defined by section 2 of this order. (e) Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology. (f) The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), 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 Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent. (g) Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology. Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology. Sec. 4. Privacy in Intimate Spaces. (a) The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act. (b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters. (c) The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex. (d) Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity. Sec. 5. Protecting Rights. The Attorney General shall issue guidance 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. In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified. Sec. 6. Bill Text. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs shall present to the President proposed bill text to codify the definitions in this order. Sec. 7. Agency Implementation and Reporting. (a) Within 120 days of the date of this order, each agency head shall submit an update on implementation of this order to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That update shall address: (i) changes to agency documents, including regulations, guidance, forms, and communications, made to comply with this order; and (ii) agency-imposed requirements on federally funded entities, including contractors, to achieve the policy of this order. (b) The requirements of this order supersede conflicting provisions in any previous Executive Orders or Presidential Memoranda, including but not limited to Executive Orders 13988 of January 20, 2021, 14004 of January 25, 2021, 14020 and 14021 of March 8, 2021, and 14075 of June 15, 2022. These Executive Orders are hereby rescinded, and the White House Gender Policy Council established by Executive Order 14020 is dissolved. (c) Each agency head shall promptly rescind all guidance documents inconsistent with the requirements of this order or the Attorney General’s guidance issued pursuant to this order, or rescind such parts of such documents that are inconsistent in such manner. Such documents include, but are not limited to: (i) “The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality”; (ii) the Department of Education’s guidance documents including: (A) “2024 Title IX Regulations: Pointers for Implementation” (July 2024); (B) “U.S. Department of Education Toolkit: Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students”; (C) “U.S. Department of Education Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School” (June 21, 2023); (D) “Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. Apoyar a los jóvenes y familias LGBTQI+ en la escuela” (June 21, 2023); (E) “Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators” (October 2021); (F) “Supporting Transgender Youth in School” (June 2021); (G) “Letter to Educators on Title IX’s 49th Anniversary” (June 23, 2021); (H) “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families” (June 2021); (I) “Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County” (June 22, 2021); (J) “Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 on America’s Students” (June 9, 2021); and (K) “Back-to-School Message for Transgender Students from the U.S. Depts of Justice, Education, and HHS” (Aug. 17, 2021); (iii) the Attorney General’s Memorandum of March 26, 2021 entitled “Application of Bostock v. Clayton County to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972″; and (iv) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” (April 29, 2024). Sec. 8. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals. (b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. (c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. (d) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.
Birch Wiley is a poet and librarian living in New York. Their work is forthcoming in Pleiades and Union Spring Literary Review, among others. Their first book, Mythweaver, will be published by new words {press} this summer.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.
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