Ohio budget excludes recognition of transgender and intersex individuals

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In the Ohio House’s budget proposal for the next two years, they explicitly recognize only male and female sexes, disregarding transgender and intersex individuals who may be born with a combination of chromosomes or a single chromosome.

As per the language in the House budget, Ohio’s state policy is to acknowledge specifically two sexes – male and female – emphasizing that these sexes are fixed and grounded in fundamental, indisputable truth.

The budget passed last week with a 60-39 vote and it now moves to the Ohio Senate. Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine must sign a budget by June 30. He has line-item veto power, so he can remove the gender limitation.

Adding the language to the budget is reckless, said Equality Ohio Executive Director Dwayne Steward. 

“The budget is not the place where we should be discussing culture war or legislating against people’s rights,” Steward said. “Instead of focusing on what’s important, like funding our schools and making sure kids have access to quality health care, they have decided a small percentage of the population should be attacked.”

The language in the House budget is similar to President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this year saying the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes.

“These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” it says. “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.”

Ohio’s legislators are trying to be in lockstep with the Trump administration, Steward said. 

“It’s almost verbatim from the executive order,” said Dara Adkison, executive director of TransOhio. “We know that there is an intentional effort to make it very difficult for trans people to exist in public spaces.”

The language in the House budget disregards intersex people who are born with variations in their sex characteristics that do not fit the typical binary definitions of male or female.

“People who are intersex have genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t fit into a male/female sex binary,” explains Cleveland Clinic. “People who are intersex may have a mix of chromosomes, such as XXY. Or they may have some cells that are XY and some cells that are XX. Or they may have just one X chromosome (XO).”

It is estimated that up to 1.7% of the population has an intersex trait, according to the Center for American Progress.

“The invalidation of all of those Ohioans as part of the budget is ridiculous,” Adkison said. 

The intersex community deserves to be recognized, Steward said. 

“They do exist,” he said. “You can’t legislate people out of existence.”

Half of all transgender and nonbinary young people in Ohio who participated in a recent Trevor Project survey said they seriously considered suicide in the past year. Fifteen percent said they attempted suicide. 

This is according to the Trevor Project’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People. The survey included about 700 people from Ohio, ages 13-24. 

Nearly three-fourths of transgender and nonbinary young people in Ohio reported feeling anxiety and 61% experienced depression, according to the survey. 

About 60% of transgender and nonbinary young people or their families have considered leaving Ohio because of anti-LGBTQ politics and law, according to the survey.

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