(LifeSiteNews) – Openly gay Montana District Court Judge Shane Vannatta issued a ruling Tuesday striking down a state law establishing biological definitions of sex in state law, claiming it violates the “single subject” rule of the Montana Constitution.
Last year, Montana enacted SB 458 to “provide a common definition for the word sex when referring to a human.” It defined a female as “a member of the human species who, under normal development, has XX chromosomes and produces … eggs” and a male as “a member of the human species who, under normal development, has XY chromosomes and would produce … sperm.”
“’Sex’ means the organization of the body parts and gametes for reproduction in human beings in other organisms,” the law said. “In human beings, there are exactly two sexes, male and female, with two corresponding types of gametes. The sexes are determined by the biological and genetic indication of male or female, including sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex chromosomes, gonads, and non-ambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth.” Such definitions are not contingent on “an individual’s psychological, behavioral, social, chosen, or subjective experience of gender,” according to the law.
LGBT activists sued in December, and Vannatta sided with them, the Washington Stand reported, focusing on the technical rules for legislation to address one subject at a time rather than ideological cries of “discrimination.”
“The legislature’s use of the conjunctive ‘and’ clearly indicates an intent to establish two mandatory prerequisites,” the judge maintained.
“For a bill to be exempt from (the ‘single subject rule’) requirements it must be for both the codification and general revision of the laws. The title does not also state the Bill is ‘for the codification’ of the law (…) Furthermore, simply adding ‘for the codification’ of the law language to the title does not exempt the Bill from the Single Subject Rule requirements.”
“The State does not address the fact that ‘sex’ has more than one definition,” he added. “The title does not indicate that the body of the Bill provides a common definition for ‘sex,’ meaning ‘gender,’ and not ‘sex’ meaning ‘sexual intercourse.’ The meaning for the word ‘sex’ is not clearly expressed in the title. The title of S.B. 458 does not clarify what meaning of ‘sex’ is intended and does not indicate that the words ‘female’ and ‘male’ are defined in the body of the Bill. The title does not give general notice of the character of the legislation in a way that guards against deceptive or misleading titles.”
The office of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte responded with disapproval, with a spokesman declaring that “words matter. And this administration is committed to ensuring words have meaning, unlike this judge, who apparently needs a dictionary to discern the difference between a noun and a verb.”
Biological sex is rooted in an individual’s chromosomes and reflected by hundreds of genetic characteristics. Hermaphroditism, in which people are born with ambiguous genitalia or their apparent sex does not match their chromosomes, is extremely rare and considered to be a disorder, rather than any sort of “third sex.”
Yet in recent years, the notion that gender is a fluid matter of personal perception, which the human body should be surgically or chemically transformed to reflect and others should be forced to accommodate, has become an article of progressive faith despite significant harm to women’s spaces, conscience rights, and gender-confused individuals themselves.