Welcome to your future, America. If New York City is at the forefront of trendsetting social science experiments - and it often is - you are in trouble unless you bow to political correctness and refer to transgendered people using the proper pronoun.
That's right. You can now be charged with discrimination under New York City law if you refer to a female transgender as "him" or "Mr."
New York City has warned landlords, employers and businesses they could be running afoul of the law by purposely calling a transgender woman "him" or "Mr." when she prefers a female title and pronoun, or by barring her from using a women's restroom.
New guidelines detail the legal protections of transgender and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers and what constitutes discrimination under the city's Human Rights Law, the New York City Commission on Human Rights said on Monday.
Some 25,000 transgender and gender non-conforming people live in New York City, where discrimination based on gender identity and expression has been illegal since 2002.
"Today's new guidelines strengthen those laws by ensuring that every transgender and gender non-conforming person in New York receives the dignity and respect they deserve," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The guidelines said dress codes requiring men to wear ties or women to wear skirts are discriminatory.
Failing to provide employee health benefits for gender-affirming care or failing to accommodate people undergoing gender transition, such as medical appointments, could violate the law as well, they said.
"It's a huge step forward and really catapults New York City to the forefront of the struggle for transgender rights," said Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, a non-profit law office based in New York.
"This is an extremely positive development for transgender New Yorkers who face enormous rates of discrimination, unemployment and difficulty accessing things like health care that people take for granted."
The idiocy of these new guidelines guarantees a swarm of lawsuits filed by transgenders for every perceived slight. It puts businesses and landlords in a straight jacket, making them walk on eggshells so as not to offend transgendered people. As we've seen many times, it doesn't take much to "offend" someone who looks to make a political statement about their particular cause.
There is also the issue of " gender queer" people who claim to be both man and woman. Dealing with someone like that will make business people's heads explode.
You would hope that some brave souls would challenge this lunacy in court. But don't hold your breath. These guidelines are the logical outcome of previous attempts to legitimize transgendered and other "non-comforming" sexual identities.
I don't think even Huxley could have envisioned such a world.
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