Oklahoma’s Ban on Nonbinary Birth Certificates Isn’t Just Cruel. It’s Ahistorical.

Late last month, Oklahoma became the first state in the country to explicitly prohibit a nonbinary gender marker on birth certificates. The legislation not only shows a profound disregard for the humanity of nonbinary people; it also rests on a mistaken belief that birth certificates are fixed records of neutral facts, and not subject to changing social values.

Sheila Dills, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the Oklahoma legislation, , saying, “We want clarity and truth on official state documents. Information should be based on established medical fact and not an ever-changing social dialogue.” In in the past century. And very often those changes came in response to a “social dialogue” in which Americans pushed back against state-imposed designations that encouraged stigmatization and discrimination.