On Friday, Governor J.B Pritzker signed a bill into law requiring all state-issued identity documents that designated gender to offer a non-binary option alongside male and female, thus becoming the 15th state to do so. Members of the LGBT community have been divided over the issue. While some celebrate a huge step towards security, bearing in mind violence suffered when trans people’s gender and their preferred name on their ID’s don’t match.
“This is about people having a legal document that demonstrates who they authentically are as a person,” Mike Ziri, public policy director for Equality Illinois, told the Sun-Times. “For non-binary individuals, this is an issue of safety and security.” However, some also believe that a further, more efficient, and more conscientious step would be to eliminate gender from official documents altogether. This way, legal transition would be made much easier and less time consuming.
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Nevertheless, trans residents of Illinois won’t be flocking to update their IDs just yet, for there is, unfortunately, a catch. The state of Illinois signed a six-year contract with their ID makers in 2018, and until the contract expires, no new “style” of IDs can be issued. Therefore, it will only be in 2024 that the issuance of nonbinary gender markers be introduced. So many things can happen in five years, no wonder why reactions to this measure have been lukewarm. Indeed there are several steps ahead for true equality.
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