Trans activists protest Florida DMV for not allowing gender identity lies on licenses
On Friday, transgender activists across the state of Florida targeted multiple Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices after Gov. DeSantis announced a new policy change to state driver’s licenses.
This includes removing the option for an individual to choose their own gender. Residents will only be able to list their birth sex on state driver’s licenses, which reverts back to the state’s initial policy.
The policy update failed to sit well with transgender activists and they were seen protesting the decision outside of multiple DMVs across Florida.
Video footage and images showed the group of protesters holding up makeshift tombstones with words written on them that insinuate the policy change will “kill” transgender people. They laid on the ground with the tombstones acting as if they were dead as they draped themselves in trans flags.
Some of the tombstones read: “Killed by the FL DMV,” “Ron DeSantis killed me,” “Killed by Ron DeSantis,” “Hate kills,” and “The DMV murdered me.”
Additionally, the group arrived with large pro-transgender signage in which one banner read: “Trans rights are human rights.”
Last month, Robert Kynoch, deputy executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, sent a memo detailing the policy change which stated that allowing an individual to change their own gender on licenses and ID cards goes against state law explaining that gender “has historically been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”
Kynoch explained that a driver’s license “is an identification document and, as such, serves a critical role in assisting public and private entities in correctly establishing the identity of a person presenting the license.”
“Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws,” he added.
Additionally, the memo warned that “misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud … and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license.”
Florida had changed the policy in 2018.