LGBT News Albertans can choose "X" on their birth certificates

This is good for inclusion and everything but it's probably going to cause problems. These are legal documents used for many purposes. If someone becomes a criminal for example, identification like this is used to catch them.

What are the police going to be told, go look for this criminal but we can't tell you whether they're male or female because we don't know? That makes it pretty hard to find them.

 

I just don't see any great benefit coming out of this particular change. Discrimination is going to be pretty apparent if you're presenting documents with an X in place of gender.

Generally, I'm pretty uncomfortable with the retrospective changing of birth certificates - they are contemporaneous records of birth above all else. In order to avoid anti-trans discrimination, I'd much rather birth certificates not be used as an ordinary form of ID for jobs etc., preferring instead licences and passports, which do contain updated gender and name details. Having a fairly confidential treatment of birth certificates and legal gender-altering bridging documents fulfils public authorities' need for accurate documentation, while protecting a right not to disclose gender identity and transitions to employers and other strangers.

@Niagara, I just think that's a pretty weak argument. Nobody's losing sight of a criminal because their birth certificate has no gender on it - it's like saying it may also be confusing that the person in question no longer weighs 4 kilograms and doesn't live in their town of birth. Birth certificates are not a significant basis for a police hunt. If anything, it is less helpful for police if the documents they rely on contain out-of-date gender information.