10/31/2021 Note: Pat Miller is a radio talk show host of a program, The Pat Miller Show. The program airs M-F, daily from 3pm-6pm on radio station WOWO, 1190am, 107.5fm.
Recently, Indiana’s Congressman Jim Banks had his official Twitter account suspended because Congressman Banks misgendered Rachel Levine as a man. Congressman Banks has refused to retract his statement, and, as of 10/31/2021, that account is still suspended. The following letter was sent to Mr. Miller soon after I made a radio appearance on his show to agree that the Twitter characterization of Congressman Banks’ action as misgendering another person was appropriate. The letter included here was sent to Pat Miller for comment. As of today, I have not heard a response from Mr. Miller.
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10/27/2021
Pat,
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a transgender female who has received a hearing in court, and the judge in that hearing granted my petition to change my name to HEATHER and my gender to FEMALE. Referring to me as Heather is appropriate, and now using pronouns of she, her and hers when referencing me is also a part of the transition.
It was with great personal distress that I listened to your recent broadcast that included support for Jim Banks and his recent Tweets that resulted in his official account getting suspended. Congressman Banks stands on his belief that his tweet was a statement of FACT.
His exact statement in defense of his position was: “Twitter has suspended my official account for posting a statement of FACT. I won’t back down.”
The text of the Tweet regarding Rachel Levine that caused the suspension was: “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
Later, he doubled down with another Tweet:
“Calling someone that was born and lived as a man for 54 years the first “female” four-star officer is an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day.”
What the Congressman states as FACT ignores the long-standing Indiana case law that has been on the books since 2014. I have attached a copy of that court decision for you to review and form your own conclusions. The exact citation for the case, if you choose to Google it and find it on your own, is:
In Re Petition for Change of Birth Certificate, 22 N.E.3d 707 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014), a citation that was included by the judge in his order granting my own change of name and gender. Links to this court case decision are also provided at the end of this article.
The matter at the time was resolved after a transgender man (just to be clear: a person assigned female at birth [a genotypical female] who wishes to change their recognized gender to male) went to court in Indiana seeking a change to his birth certificate from female to male. The initial court that heard the case denied his request. But the matter was reversed and remanded to the lower court by the Court of Appeals of Indiana, who ruled that the lower case had erred in denying the request. The Appeals Court agreed in a unanimous verdict that was written by one judge and concurred to by the other two judges.
The opinion of the Appeals Court is loaded with commentary about the appropriate level of medical evidence that was presented in support of the gender marker change, including but not limited to completion of sex reassignment surgery.
The significance of this court decision should be obvious: every transgender person who goes to court, in Indiana and other states, in order to change their name and gender marker, has met a medical burden of proof that has satisfied the court that something significant has changed to the person originally declared one sex at birth. (I will add further that one of the qualifying criteria for a transgender person to receive a revised driver’s license from the Indiana BMV is the presentation of a signed statement from a treating physician who certifies that the individual in question has indeed completed sufficient medical treatment for it to be proper to grant the gender transition that is sought. (In my case, I presented the BMV with statements provided by TWO different treating physicians.)
Ordinarily, a court order is respected as the rule of law where specific legislative guidance is absent. How many times have I heard talk show hosts refer to court decisions that have decided major cultural treatment of various topics simply because of case law?
Court rulings ARE significant and a part of the entire ruling fabric of our society. We cannot pick and choose when we will accept the court as a matter of authority. Ultimately, if we disagree with court rulings, we challenge them in court at a later time or we persuade our legislators to craft law that legislatively addresses the matters.
It is worth noting that the judge in his written opinion was extremely careful to use the correct pronouns as he referred to the Appellant. Throughout the writing, you will find instances of “he” and “his”, never using female pronouns to refer to the Appellant. This is correction #1, Congressman Banks.
It is also worth noting that the opinion reports that similar language exists and guides the practices in 47 of our 50 states, with Ohio, Idaho and Tennessee being the only states at the time that did not allow gender reclassifications. (Ohio has since changed its position to allow for such changes; I do not know the status of Idaho and Tennessee.) This is an overwhelming recognition of the right for a person to seek court intervention in cases where legislation does not specifically provide for gender changes. I hope you will agree that 48 states out of 50 is an overwhelming statement of agreement that such changes are appropriate and shall be granted when the proper steps have been taken to fulfill any legislative or judicial requirements that are part of the documentation required before the change is granted.
And so this brings us back to Congressman Banks’ statement of FACT and his subsequent defense of his original comments. The legislators or courts in 48 of the 50 states agree that sex is not locked in at birth. For the individuals whose dysphoria is sufficient to cause them to seek relief via a life-altering transition, the courts have tests that provide that sufficient medical changes have occurred before they agree that a change of sex has occurred, and a corresponding change of name and gender markers is appropriate.
You and others may disagree if you choose to, but that is what I see as FACT.
No one who changes gender does so lightly, as a fad merely to be in tune with the cutting edge issues of the day. Genders are not changed just so men can get into the bathrooms of the ladies. (It should go without saying, but I VEHEMENTLY oppose rape of any flavor; by definition, rape is the taking of any other in a non-consensual manner. It is just as abhorrent when it is perpetrated by a boy in a skirt who walks into a school bathroom in Virginia, and even more so if he does it multiple times.) Transgender females are just like any other females: they are in the bathroom that best suits their appearance, just for the specific purpose of getting in, peeing or do other bathroom business, and getting out!
Furthermore, it is overly simplistic for Congressman Banks to refer to Rachel’s age of transition as a reason for implying that she is a “man”. That is precisely why his remarks are bullying, mocking, and disrespectful. I’m sure Rachel Levine did not casually wake up one day as a 54 year-old, flip a coin, and decide “OK, let’s do this. Heads I stay male, tails I transition to female”. I believe if I were to read an autobiography, I would find that Rachel Levine had dysphoria that began far earlier in life than that present age. Like me, one must ponder such life-impacting choices (yes, I agree that transitioning is a choice, merely to say that some people choose not to transition and some even de-transition later because the stakes are so high and not knowable before they are faced against the real-life hostile members of society who pressure them to adopt to the “right” way of thinking.)
While we are discussing transgender topics, transgender athletes are just like any other athletes: competition will cause the best to be the champions, but opportunity exists for the top-tier athletes whether or not they win, far more than just the handful of examples that the naysayers present as the competitive disadvantage. Transgender athletes do not always win. Biological females do not get overlooked as though there is only one chance at college or the Olympics or further athletic pursuits. (Indeed, did all known competing transgender females win in the recent Olympics? No.) Is an absence of transgender competition an assurance that certain females are going to win? No.
You may argue that it is certain THAT a female will win; but this is more just a case of “whose ox is gored?” No athlete is guaranteed victory just because they train hard to become better at what they do.
Two clear examples relating to local high school competition come to mind. If you know Fort Wayne high school basketball, then you might know the name of Jim Master. Jim was a player in Kentucky through his junior year. For his senior year, his family moved to Fort Wayne. I’m sure that the reputation of Coach Harlan Frick played a big role in the family’s selection of Harding High School as the place where Jim would finish his high school career. As you likely know, Jim Master had a phenomenal senior season, and he was named Indiana’s Mr. Basketball. And he went on to complete a successful college career back at the University of Kentucky. I’m sure there were many “native” Hoosier boys who previously thought they were serious contenders for this coveted basketball title when they played as juniors. Little did they know the title was going to be swept away from them by a move-in player that they may not even know existed.
The second story is about another Harding HS athlete. Her name was LaShanda Harper. LaShanda was fast. Super fast. For two consecutive seasons, she led the Hawks to back to back state championships, a feat that was almost single-handedly due to her own personal excellence. She ran in the 100, 200, and track relay teams. And she jumped the long jump, sort of a female version of a former Olympic champion named Carl Lewis. LaShanda single-handedly scored enough wins and points at the state meet to defeat every other TEAM in the state. For two consecutive seasons, dreams of a state team title were overcome by this ONE athlete who was the same birth gender as her competition.
Competition will always be present. What I am hoping we adopt one day will be to consider the transgender athlete as a viable person who has changed genders NOT JUST TO GAIN ATHLETIC ADVANTAGE. The story of East German athletes of old in the Olympics is not at all the same; those folks were possibly enticed (forced?) to consider gender changes because of the pressure for the Communist teams to excel for their country at the Olympics. Today’s transgender athletes transition for reasons other than competitive advantage, and viewing the situation from their perspective is reasonable and appropriate from my point of view.
And here’s another thing to consider about “transgender advantage”. Some states are passing laws that say you must compete in the sex of your birth. But such a narrow approach to these issues then creates a new kind of “advantage”: if transgender men (folks who were assigned female at birth) are required to compete as women, then won’t those individuals have some competitive advantage over other females? After all, these people are taking testosterone precisely to bulk up and be more manly. Why is it competitively fair to force these people to move to competition against males if you are not going to balance the entire spectrum of athletes by allowing transgender females to compete against other females? It seems to me the naysayers are trying to have it both ways, ways that still produce competitive disadvantage for someone.
Enough for this one email.
It was sad that I heard you and subsequent callers poke fun at me after you concluded my phone call to you. I ended my call by respectfully yielding the phone line back to you because you had other callers that you wanted to take. But that respect shown to you never made it on the air because you had released the line and hung up on my call before the comments aired.
I will gladly interact with you to any degree that you desire if you would like to RESPECTFULLY interact with a transgender individual who is a Christian, conservative, a Republican for much of my life, and a CPA who has given serious thought to making my gender transition even in this conservative state of Indiana. However, the word respect must be allowed to be defined by me; I have heard talk show hosts far too often receive guests who present opposing points of view, and they ultimately end the call and declare to their audience how respectful they were as they shredded the guest just for the sake of good ratings and audience approval. It is pure ignorance to believe that any out transgender person has made their life decisions lightly, and too much of the interaction between folks comes from the perspective that science is final and agreed-to, and therefore minds have already formed opinions that, as Jim Banks tweeted, represent FACT. This is clearly one topic where the discussion will be ongoing, and a better understanding of the transgender person is not just entertainment; it is necessary to have in a thriving, open society.
Heather Lynn
Pronouns: she/her/hers
https://casetext.com/case/in-re-petition-for-change-of-birth-certificate
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/in-court-of-appeals/1685820.html
Lessons of Life: My Journey 