Biden HHS Releases Trans Pronoun Mandate for Department Employees in Time for ‘National Coming Out Day’
A new internal “gender identity” guidance that mandates use of transgender pronoun preferences was released this week by the Biden Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The guidance seeks to ensure HHS employees “are able to show up every day as their whole selves,” says Andrea Palm, HHS deputy secretary, in an unlisted video titled “Gender Identity Guidelines,” produced by the department in time for what LGBTQ activists call “National Coming Out Day.”
“Today, HHS is announcing a new Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Guidance,” Palm continued. “Who you are and who you know yourself to be is valid. We want you to be your authentic self every day, regardless of your gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, or disability status.”
Palm added the new gender identity “guidance” will ensure “all employees feel safe coming to work.”
Cheryl Campbell, HHS assistant secretary for administration, provided the details of the “new policy that clearly outlines the rights and protections for transgender and non-binary employees across the department.”
Campbell emphasized:
The policy provides department-level coordination for EEO protections across HHS, outlining the protections when employees undergo workplace changes, such as legal name changes, and provides workplace procedures that safeguard gender expressions. More specifically, it calls for a streamlined ability to update names in HHS IT systems and outlines how transgender employees can change their names in their official records. It also makes clear that all employees should be addressed by the names and pronouns they use to describe themselves. It clarifies that employees can wear clothing and use restrooms per their gender identity.
Admiral Rachel (born Richard) Levine, assistant secretary for health, who uses the pronouns “she/her,” introduced the final segment of the video.
“As an out and proud transgender woman in a senior leadership position at HHS, I want to extend my greetings for a Happy National Coming Out Day,” Levine said. “The Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Guidance is very important, and all supervisors and managers are responsible for helping to ensure it is fully implemented across all of the [operating divisions] and [staff divisions].”
On Wednesday, LGBTQ activists celebrated “National Coming Out Day,” a day on which the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a top activist organization, urged its followers “to stand up against hate in schools, libraries, and everywhere they live, work, and play.”
In June, HRC declared a “National State of Emergency” due to legislation passed in states that seek to protect children and teens with gender dysphoria from life-altering transgender hormone drugs and surgeries.
While some European nations have pulled back considerably from treating gender-confused young people with drugs and surgeries, the U.S. federal government, under Joe Biden, continues to encourage aggressive medical intervention when children claim discomfort with their biological sex.
In February, Levine addressed staff of the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (CCMC) gender clinic, applauding the work of what activists call “gender-affirming care” and promising such treatments would become more accepted because opposition to them was not a winning political issue.
“I think that the wheel will turn on this,” Levine told CCMC staff.
“I think that it’s not going to be politically advantageous,” the HHS official surmised. “It wasn’t particularly in 2022. And so, I think that as we look to all the different elections in 2024, I think the next two years are going to be challenging, but I am positive and optimistic and hopeful that the wheel will turn after that, and that this issue won’t be as politically and socially such a minefield.”
Gender clinic staff have the support of the “highest levels of the federal government,” including Biden, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and the Department of Justice, Levine said.
Meanwhile, the official trailer of Affirmation Generation: The Lies of Transgender Medicine, a documentary which premiered in September 2022, features six young detransitioners who share how they sought medical intervention for gender dysphoria but, instead, were irreversibly harmed by "gender-affirming care”:
HHS’ new transgender pronoun mandate was observed on X on Wednesday by Roger Severino, former director of HHS Office for Civil Rights in the Trump administration.
“HHS today imposed a transgender pronoun mandate on its employees who will now be forced to deny biological realities with their own words or face firing,” Severino wrote. “Those with faith objections should immediately request religious accommodation and prepare to fight for your rights.”
Now vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, Severino told Catholic News Agency (CNA) the new transgender policy shows the Biden HHS has “replaced science and evidence with ideology,” and warned it could be used to target Christian HHS employees who profess “the biological and scientific reality of male and female.”
Severino said:
Under the First Amendment, [the department] cannot compel people to speak falsehoods; it also cannot compel people to adopt as their own a state-approved ideology [and it] cannot require people of faith to deny their faith with their own lips.
“People should be prepared to file lawsuits to indicate their free speech and religious liberty rights and people of faith should flood HHS with religious accommodations requests and be prepared to defend themselves and their faith from this attack,” Severino urged.
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