The Idaho Department of Health & Welfare is accommodating itself to a judicial ruling that requires the State to allow individuals to change the gender on their Certificate of Live Birth. They are inviting public comment on these changes (email at dhwrules@dhw.idaho.gov) and below is my open letter on this matter:
Dear Idaho Department of Health & Welfare,
Good afternoon. It is my understanding that your department is receiving public input on permitting individuals to change their gender on certificates of live birth. I am unable to attend the public hearing here in Coeur d’Alene this Friday but wanted to take the time to register my concerns and objections to allowing such changes.
As a pastor in the State of Idaho, I share the concern of others in our community for those who are suffering confusion regarding their sexual identity. The mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical distress that accompany such confusion is monumental and these individuals need true help. They need to be counseled to reconcile their sexual identity with their biological sex. Any other sort of counsel or therapy is deceitful, encouraging the person to lie to themselves and others.
Regardless of one’s personal perception of their sexual identity, their biological sex is a fixed reality. We have been created and born either male or female and birth certificates in our State have reflected this truth. Indeed, it is the duty of the State of Idaho to represent that fixed reality, that truth, in our documentation for truth’s sake. The State no more has the right to classify a biological male as a female than it has the right to declare that dogs are cats and cats are dogs. The State does not have the right to lie. To do so will invite the judgment of Almighty God upon us.
If the Federal Government is endeavoring tyrannically to force our State to allow such changes on our birth certificates, then I would urge Governor Little to appeal, first, to God, the Supreme Ruler over all men and nations, to have mercy upon our State and, second, to the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn such a wicked mandate. If States are refusing the dictates of the Federal Government regarding the legalization of marijuana (which they are), then certainly the State of Idaho can refuse the dictates of the Federal Government regarding the preservation of the truth on our birth certificates.
Let me urge you, therefore, to continue to record the biological sex of individuals on Idaho Certificates of Live Birth. Such certificates should not be changed unless the biological sex was mistakenly recorded.
Sincerely,
Stuart W. Bryan
Pastor
Trinity Church
A Reformed & Evangelical Congregation
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
www.trinitycda.org