Last October, the prospect of Donald Trump winning the presidency loomed large in the mind of one transgender Louisville resident. They knew they had to set plans in motion, and fast.
Political instability revived a plan on the backburner. They married their partner and made contingency plans to protect their assets and draft a will.
“I was looking at other places we could potentially move to if the situation were to come to that, looking at what we're able to get in order in terms of our house and finances that would allow us to be able to leave,” they said.
LPM News is not naming the man to protect their privacy.
Getting a new passport was a part of the plan. In December, they contacted the Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy nonprofit based in Louisville. The Fairness Campaign helped with their passport application, which they submitted shortly before Trump took office in January. They asked for an “M” marker in the sex field.
But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order stating that only two sexes, male and female, were recognized by the federal government. It directed the State Department to eliminate the ‘X’ gender as an option and no longer allowed transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to update the gender marker in the sex field on their passports.
When the Louisville man received their passport in mid-February, the document had “F” in the sex field. That made their passport inconsistent with some of their other identity documents – their birth certificate has no sex marker, their marriage certificate says “M” and they’re waiting to get a letter from their doctor to get an “M” gender marker on their Kentucky driver’s license.
Read the rest at Louisville Public Media.
