Birthday Wishes
There are two things I want for my 43rd birthday that may not be realistic. The fact that I have to write an essay to explain them doesn't bode well.
First, I want to see an end to the war in Afghanistan. It began on my birthday in 2001. I don't understand why we are still there and I don't think that I know anyone who does.
Last spring I saw the movie Where Soldiers Come From. At least some of the soldiers who are over there on a mission to clear IEDs from the roads understand that there wouldn't be IEDs in the roads if they weren't there. It's the circular logic of eternal war.
Radical Honesty started making t-shirts this year. One of my ideas was to superimpose a graphic of the Afghanistan borders over the text My country invaded the Graveyard of Empires, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
I'm planning civil disobedience at the White House tomorrow to celebrate my birthday and the 10th anniversary of our longest war. I understand that the Afghan government is probably going to collapse after we leave. It's quite likely that no government that supports us will endure, so I think it's better to cut our losses--and theirs--immediately.
The second thing I want for my birthday is to get the necessary 5000 signatures on my petition, created using the new whitehouse "We the People" system: http://wh.gov/4ld This is what I propose with it:
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
recognize a third option for sexual identity on all federalgovernment-issued IDs, denoted with the letter X.
If I get the signatures by October 24, 2011, the petition will get a cabinet-level response. I expect they will punt responsibility for enacting this to Congress, but I want to hear that from them anyway (and it would be nice if my legislators offered similar options).
I have an agenda to my petition beyond providing a greater range of legally recognized gender identities. I want to bring the matter of identity to the forefront of the gay marriage debate. The fact that the federal government defines marriage as between "one man and one woman", but fails to define the terms "man" or "woman", is critical. The law also refers to "opposite sex" and therefore relies on a strict binary construction of sexuality that does not actually exist in nature.
There are babies born who have cell in some parts of their bodies with XX chromosomes and others in the same body have XY chromosomes. Other babies are born with both testes and ovaries. Even if one is set (of genes or genitals) is technically non-functional, it is going to be nearly impossible to construct a legal definition of "man" and "woman" without excluding some individuals from either identity.
If this is the case, is it so much of a stretch to imagine that various endocrine disruptors in the environment cause developing brains to diverge from the expected path of biological sex identity? That is, various chemicals found in plastics and used in various manufacturing process are probably the reason why at least some individuals grow up believing that they were born in the wrong body and want to alter their sex. It seems equally possible that this disruption is also a basis for some homosexual identity.
The are those will continue to assert that homosexuality is always a choice, and that every human is clearly either male or female at birth, even when presented with evidence of chimeras and pseudohermaphrodites. I think that the majority of people, given sufficient education about biological reality, would agree that we either need to provide additional categories for sex/gender identity, or stop asking the question altogether.
I am equally in favor of that latter option. I also favor more than three possible options for gender/sex on identification. Three seems like a good first step, and X is particularly appropriate to signify either a cross-over identity, or null identity.
I believe that the final assignment of sex on IDs is a medical matter that should be otherwise generally covered by doctor/patient confidentiality laws. That is: the person on the ID should have primary input, with concurrence of a physician, to the chosen identity.
I tend to believe that sexual identity is a rudimentary form of self-determination, and that the larger right of states to self-determination is a cumulative form of the individual right of self-determination with which we're all born.
I also believe that babies who are born with intersex traits should not be surgically or hormonally altered to fit their parents' gender agenda for their lives.
I didn't know how to put all this into my petition, so I'm putting it here, in this crazy list of unlikely birthday wishes. So I'm keeping my actual expectations low: I'll be happy to get arrested and not beaten, and I'll be happy to get input to help me refine my petition so that it gets the signatures and gets action.
Mike Lewinski
Silver Spring, MD
October 6, 2011
