Women’s shelters must admit ‘transgender’ men: Obama admin rule
Women’s shelters must admit men who say they
are “transgender” if they receive federal funding, according to a new
regulation imposed by the Obama administration. The administration stripped out
a provision that would allow shelters to deny a biological male access to the
women’s facilities, under narrow circumstances, if they felt it would endanger
women’s “health and safety.”
The requirement applies to federally funded
faith-based shelters and homeless facilities, as well.
“Today, we take another important step to
ensure full acceptance of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in
the programs HUD supports,” said Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary
Julián Castro on Tuesday when the rule,originally proposed last October, was finalized.
The final rule erased a measure that would
have let shelters, which often protect women and children from their abusers,
refuse to house a man in a women’s shelter based on safety concerns on a
“case-by-case basis.”
The final report states, “HUD removes the
proposed rule language that under narrow circumstances, a written case-by-case
determination could be made on whether an alternative accommodation for a
transgender individual would be necessary to ensure health and safety.”
“Public commenters expressed concern that the
exception could be inappropriately used to avoid compliance with the equal
access requirement,” the Obama administration’s rule says.
The administration stated that numerous people
who commented on the rule feared that men would say they were transgender in
order to physically or sexually abuse women.
“Obama's HUD bureaucrats are putting those
women at risk for abuse and worse by men claiming to be women,” Gary Bauer, the
president of American Values,
told LifeSiteNews in August. Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at
the Family Research Council,
agreed the motion would further victimize “vulnerable women and children who
may have already been victims of physical or sexual abuse."
Christopher Hambrook said he identified as
female before abusing
multiple women in a Toronto shelter for women.
Hambrook, whom court documents described as “hypersexual,” had
already molested a five-year-old girl and raped a 27-year-old woman with
cognitive delays. Inside the shelter, he watched women shower.
On Tuesday, Rep. Mark Takano, a California
Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, called the rule
“groundbreaking.”
“The HUD rule will literally save lives,” Rep.
Takano said.
The rule has no exemption for religious
organizations that participate in HUD’s Community Planned and Development (CPD)
program. “It is HUD's hope that faith-based organizations will continue to
actively participate in HUD’s CPD programs and provide services to transgender
persons in accordance with the requirements set in this rule,” the government
says in a 73-page
report.
Juliana Gonen, policy director of the National
Center for Lesbian Rights, said her organization “strongly support[s] this
rule,” because it sets the “example” that laws at every level of government
“should respect and affirm the people they affect.”
Some on the Left said the regulation reflects
the president’s determination to enact his leftist supporters’ political
agenda, often by executive
orders and administrative
regulations.
“The Obama administration continues to make
good on its promise to stand with transgender people,” said Laura Durso, senior
director for the Center for American Progress’ LGBT Research and Communications
Project.
The rule takes effect 30 days after it is
published in the Federal Register.
