The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed the department staff to freeze all applications for passports with “X” sex markers, following a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day of office. According to The Guardian, Mr Rubio, in an internal cable sent Thursday, informed the staff of the change, mandating “sex, and not gender, shall be used” in official documents like passports and birth records in US embassies and consulates abroad. Staff have been specifically instructed to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker.”
“The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” the email read, as per The Guardian. The policy affects both current and future passport applications. Passports already issued will not be recalled, but applicants will not be able to choose the “X” designation when renewing their travel documents.
According to Mr Rubio’s email, “guidance on existing passports containing an X sex marker will come via other channels”.
Notably, the State Department began issuing passports with the non-binary third-gender identification “X” in April 2022. “The Department is setting a precedent as the first federal government agency to offer the X gender marker on an identity document,” former Secretary of State Antony Blinkens said in March of that year, lauding the move as a “milestone” in efforts to “better serve all US citizens, regardless of their gender identity”.
Other agencies like US Citizenship and Immigration Services also offered “X” options for gender-nonconforming Americans.
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However, after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order that stated that “the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female.”
The executive order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, mandates that government-issued identification documents exclusively use “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”.
The order states that “sexes are not changeable”. “‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity,'” it also reads.