Maryland Mulls Adding ‘Unspecified’ Gender Option for Driver’s Licenses

The Maryland state legislature is mulling over whether to add an “unspecified” gender option on driver’s license applications.

The Maryland House of Delegates Environment and Transportation committee held a hearing Thursday on the bill, which would allow citizens applying for a driver’s license to mark “X” on their applications instead of selecting a male or female gender.

“I’m not concerned about how [transgender individuals] feel about themselves,” Del. Bill Folden (R-Frederick) said at the hearing, according to WTOP. “The issue is you are born one way or the other.”

Transgender activist Dana Beyer, who is running for the state Senate as a Democrat, responded that the legislature has to “respect” how people sexually develop.

“You really do need to respect peoples’ sense of who they are. Sexual development is very complicated. Gender is your sense of yourself as a man or a woman or as neither,” said Beyer, of Chevy Chase.

“Because you don’t feel [a specific gender, it] doesn’t mean that you are still not, physically, a male or female,” Folden countered.

If the bill passes, Maryland will join Oregon, the District of Columbia, Washington, and California in allowing driver’s licenses without a specified gender.