A new rule proposed by President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services seeks to quietly redefine family by ridding child support regulations of important biological terms such as “mother,” “father,” and “paternity.”
Americans have until Nov. 27 to weigh in on a rule from the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) that would replace words describing female and male parents with the “gender-neutral” word “parentage” in federal child support regulations. The OCSS also suggests ridding its edicts of sex-specific pronouns such as “his” or “her” and replacing them with ‘‘their.’’
“This proposed change recognizes that numerous States have updated their laws and procedures to meet the legal, financial, and emotional needs of the families in their jurisdiction ensuring that all children in their caseloads can receive child support services and support from their parents, regardless of the structure of their family,” the rule draft states.
OCSS recognizes that current law requires “the establishment of paternity and requiring genetic testing in contested paternity cases” but claims that’s no excuse to limit the definition of parent to a child’s biological mother and father.
The bureaucrats who conjured the rule contend that all states should be allowed “to establish parentage for all children in accordance with their laws, regardless of the gender of their parents or family structure.”
They cite the ill-named Respect for Marriage Act, the Republican-supported codification of the Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, as further evidence that taxpayer-funded programs should acknowledge “the existence of and legal needs of diverse family structures.”
The OCSS also pointed out that its proposal aligns with a multitude of President Biden’s Executive orders, which “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including members of the LGBTQI+ communities.”
The government’s bid to enshrine Orwellian “newspeak” in its family-oriented programs resembles the Marxist push often touted by leftist political movements like Black Lives Matter to destroy the definition of the nuclear family.
The proposed rule threatens to erase the benefits of traditional marriage, a structure that gives children a better chance at life than their peers who grow up in fractured or same-sex households. It also will give legal flexibility to Americans who use assisted reproductive technology to commission the creation of babies regardless of their sex or relationship status and want to be recognized as parents of a baby manufactured with purchased eggs or sperm.
Sens. Marco Rubio, James Lankford, Kevin Cramer, Mike Braun, Ted Cruz, and Cindy Hyde-Smith penned a letter in October condemning the Biden administration for trying to force its “don’t say dad” agenda on American taxpayers.
“We are disappointed that your administration is using CSE as a tool to advance radical gender ideology, rather than strengthening its ability to help families,” the Republicans wrote. “Americans understand that mothers and fathers are different, and that both parents play vital roles in raising their children. Federal regulations should uphold this fact rather than erasing the reality of biological sex in the law at the behest of left-wing activists.”
They urged the department to rescind the rule and refocus its efforts on reforming child support regulations “to require fathers to pay child support throughout pregnancy.”
“This reform, unlike your administration’s proposed rule, would provide tangible support to the millions of mothers who rely on this program. Crucially, it requires an acknowledgment of the basic reality of biological sex—a reality your administration sadly seeks to erase from the law,” the Republicans concluded.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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