Why did I get the idea @Babale is in South Africa? Like scudsucker.
Cool story bro. You’ve clarified your position, I’ll quote it again just so you don’t accuse me of lying:
That position - that parents should be able to choose to leave sex off the birth certificate* if they want to - is an extreme one, and certainly one that seems “too far” to me. So when you criticize Maher for his criticism of the left while holding this position that’s very easy to criticize along exactly the same lines Maher did, it rings extremely hollow.
And to be super clear, Maher was wrong when he said that the law in California allows parents to leave the birth certificate with no sex and “we’ll see”; California’s law does not allow that (although it DOES allow parents to go and remove sex from the birth certificate immediately after the fact). But your stated position is more extreme than the Californian law, so again, you criticizing Maher when the position you hold is closer to the law he incorrectly imagined than to the actual law again rings extremely hollow.
*Per your phrasing I guess they could also put the sex opposite the one the baby would be assigned if a doctor was doing the assigning, but I’m not sure if you’d actually bite the bullet and say you support parents being able to do that?
South Africa, Southern California… Potato, avocado.
I’m having a hard time imagining why you’d need your birth certificate for any of those.
Here’s a hypothetical for you, Babs, would you prefer if California state agents conduct children’s underwear checks to audit birth certificates, or would you rather roll up your sleeves and do it yourself?
That might just be because “It” in that quote is not, in fact, talking about your birth certificate. Review the quote that the post you quoted is quoting to see what “it” was.
You have some very interesting ideas about what happens when a birth certificate is issued.
Okay…
It really does seem like you’re talking about birth certificates, there.
Clarifying (yet again) that Maher was wrong.
"Maher then said some states went as far as saying “let’s not even put [gender] on the birth certificate.”
“Were we teaching that?” Oswalt asked.
“Teaching it? It was a law here in California!” Maher shot back.
“He was likely referring to California, in 2019, becoming the first state to put “non-binary” as the gender designation on birth certificates.” (note that the law does not prohibit designating ‘M’ or ‘F’ on birth certificates).
“Teach what?” Oswalt followed up."
“Don’t put sex on the birth certificate!” Maher said. “We’ll see. Now, we’ve passed that period now.”
"Oswalt said he did not remember that, and Maher said that is because a lot of it does not permeate the “Bluesky bubble.”
This kerfuffle is another illustration that facts are not allowed to penetrate Maher’s fantasy bubble of being a brave-maverick-speaking-truth-to-Democrats.
I’m talking about your legal sex.
The birth certificate is one of the places where your legal sex is recorded. It’s the first place where your legal sex is recorded, and for the first few years of life until you need a passport or something it’s the only place where your legal sex is recorded, but later on in life that changes.
For example, my daughter just enrolled in a new school, and they put her in the system as female; they needed documentation from us when we signed her up, and we provided them with the birth certificate to show that my daughter:
- is in fact our daughter
- is the age we say she is
- is a female
- is legally named what we said she is named
Etc…
Now I’m trying to imagine what food would be good with potatoes and avocados. Maybe a breakfast burrito with guacamole on the side…
And if “Sex” wasn’t on your daughter’s birth certificate, what about this process would have been stymied?
Then there wouldn’t be legal record of her sex.
And that’s bad because…
If you don’t think that eliminating the legal record keeping of people’s sex, then that’s fine; that’s a position you can take and argue for or against.
But then it’s exceedingly silly if you get offended by Bill Maher saying “some people on the Left wanted to take gender off the birth certificate”. Instead of screeching in horror about what a liar Bill Maher is, say what you just said - “Why would that be bad?”.
You didn’t do that, to be clear. And if that’s your criticism of Maher - that he opposes positions that you support - then great, criticize him for that all you want.
Then why is that your reply to me, instead of answering the question I actually asked?
To be clear, Maher made the false claim that California made it a law to not put sex on birth certificates. He didn’t say “some on the left want to do this”, he said California did it.
You do understand that “sex” and “gender” are two different things, right?
(and, AIUI, one can have their “legal sex” surgically altered)
So, reading your subsequent posts, it was the birth certificate all along…
Because this is a thread about Bill Maher.
If you want an answer to your question - I think we should keep legal record of people’s sex; as long as the law doesn’t treat men and women identically (and it doesn’t, it would be very difficult to overcome the history of gender based discrimination faced by women if the law just pretended none of this existed and treated men and women identically) then we need a legal distinction between the sexes.
While it’s true that sex isn’t binary and putting “Male” or “Female” on the birth certificate doesn’t work in 100% of cases, the system does work in the overwhelming majority of cases, especially when the system includes the ability to change the legally assigned sex after the fact. The fact that the system doesn’t work in all cases means that we should make accomodations for those cases where it doesn’t work; it doesn’t mean that we should toss out the entire system.