Associated PressAssociated Press
FILE - Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt delivers his State of the State address in Oklahoma City, on Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. Stitt has signed a bill prohibiting the use of nonbinary gender markers on state birth certificates. The first-term Republican signed the bill Tuesday, April 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The bill signed by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is the first of its kind in the nation.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health had an agreement in a civil case allowing a nonbinary option. The birth certificate was issued after the agency initially refused the request. People who do not identify as male or female do not have traditional gender assignments.

The news of the settlement prompted outrage among Republicans, including Stitt, who along with fellow conservatives in a number of GOP-led states have been engaged in a culture war over issues like restricting LGBTQ and abortion rights that drive the party's base in an election year. The governor issued an executive order prohibiting any changes to a person's gender on their birth certificates despite the settlement agreement after his appointee to lead the agency abruptly resigned. The state has not responded to the civil rights group's challenge of the executive order.

Many states only offer male or female gender options on birth certificates, but Oklahoma is the first to write the non-binary prohibition into law.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 15 states and the District of Columbia allow a gender marker designation outside of male or female. When Vermont's new statute goes into effect, that number will increase.

People are free to believe whatever they want about their identity, but science has determined that people are either biologically male or female at birth, according to the House sponsor of the bill. Information should be based on established medical facts.

Oklahoma City Democrat Rep. Mauree Turner was elected the first openly nonbinary legislator in the country in 2020.

Turner said it was an extreme and grotesque use of power in this body to write this law and try to pass it.

Several bills have been introduced this year by Republicans in conservative states. The governor of Oklahoma signed a bill prohibiting trans girls from playing on female sports teams, one of many such laws being signed into law across the country. Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas are conservative states that have passed laws prohibiting gender-confirming treatments for children.

The US State Department recently issued its first passport with a gender designation, marking a milestone in the recognition of the rights of people who do not identify as male or female.

Sex and gender are not the same. While sex typically refers to a person's physical appearance, gender identity is more of a sense of being male, female or somewhere in between, according to a doctor.

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