Blue and pink flags encompassed the reticent White House. Billowing in the crisp breeze, and passionately attempting to forestall execrable continuations of the government’s transphobic policies. Transgender advocacy organizations renounced the recent memo in Washington D.C. to defend their status as government recognized human beings.

It was one of the most vocal and impassioned responses to an audacious transphobic leader. The president has an anti-transgender agenda, and this new memo is the most impudent indicator. The New York Times exposed the administration’s secret memo detailing how, “The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government wide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.”

The rollback of federal recognition and civil rights for transgender citizens has harrowing effects, yet it is the ethic standard of this definition that is truly alarming. If activated, this definition would revoke health care and educational benefits, in addition to a military ban set earlier in Trump’s presidency for transgender people. It would fail to recognize 1.4 million citizens living in the United States. Unsurprisingly, it violates several human rights created by the United Nations.

Article 1 of the United Nations Human Rights Declaration states: “All human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Abrogating transgender civil rights violates this article. The advantage held by non-transgender citizens concerning health care, education and military service contravenes the ideology of everyone is equal in rights. Likewise, the second article states, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or status.” Again, the administration’s memo breaches the right that everyone deserves the same freedoms.

Four sections later, Article 6 states: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” The active memo fails to recognize the appellation of transgender, thus repudiating this article. The passage afterward echoes this sentiment, meaning the memo’s ideology breaks it.

Article 21 stresses the right to participate directly or indirectly in government or governmental services. The military ban on transgender citizens contradicts this, and the memo would prevent the rollback of this restriction. The 23^rd section also deflates the ban by saying everyone has the right to a job of their choice. Both sections 25 and 26 explain the right of adequate lifestyles and education, respectively. The repeal of health care benefits violates the 25^th article, while Title IX treachery disregards the latter section.

Article 28 states: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” Likewise, Article 30 describes how, “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.” The purpose of the administration’s declaration is to revoke the status of transgender Americans, thus taking away civil rights for those citizens. It counters the sentiments that every citizen must be able to utilize their rights and no government can purposely strip citizens of these freedoms.

The memo breaches nine of the Declaration’s rights, equating to 30%. This debate of transgender rights is not a battle of gender identity ideology, yet the preservation of basic human rights. The administration’s sly distraction from their true crimes using philosophy to blind right supporters can cause harmful effects for the transgender community. Painting this debacle as anti-scientific eventually allows the government to create deceptive laws designed to battle ideology, not civil rights. A military ban was construed as a simple attack on transgender citizens’ easily reversible conscience, rather than a brazen discharge of human rights.

This aggression towards the rights of transgender civilians is similar to the assaults on minorities during the 1960’s. The restrictions on African Americans before the Civil Rights movement were in conjunction with the broken nine rights the memo breaches, in addition to more. They did not possess adequate living conditions, education and were not treated equally with white people. Furthermore, the decision-making relied on people’s past ignorance of viewing African Americans as a race under themselves. Let me be clear, that is not an assumption that transgender critics believe the group is under them, yet a comparison to show both governments deceptively blinding their supporters. In the 1960’s the government used a subordinate ideology to distract the breach of human codes, likewise with today’s politicians cloaking civil rights in philosophy.

The fact this comparison can be made is appalling. Fifty years later, the United States has not figured out civil rights for all groups. The recent nationwide emergence of the transgender community should not be an excuse for the administration’s blatant attack. Government cloaking is as essential to our history as voting or freedom of speech. It is a calculated assault on a specific group, not a misunderstanding on how to handle basic human rights. It has happened all throughout the country’s history, yet we ignore it, sacrificing the true issues at stake. This trend is continuing during the war between the LGBT community and the Trump administration.

Currently, transgender critics battle the ideology of switching gender, rather than realizing the assault on the community’s rights as human beings. That cannot continue to ensure the preservation of their rights. The last problem a country like the United States needs is to reform civil rights taken away from its citizens. That is too primal for a country that enjoys holding itself in high esteem.

When scholars review oppressive history, the side that is sympathized with is the oppressed. The oppressors barely ever gain the sympathy of individuals, due to their blatantly cruel actions. Most sympathize with the oppressed African Americans and Jewish citizens tortured because as humans they do not mean harm on innocent people, yet, some of these people critique the emergence of an expansive transgender community. They can see behind them with spectacles, but the present is a dark cave. History will look upon the offenses against the transgender community poorly, not praise it. It has been the trend of oppressive history.

It is not only the responsibility of Americans to decide to aid the oppressed, yet realize the political tactics to keep transgender citizens subordinate to other groups. The recognition of these coordinated attacks halts further oppression for this group and prevent others from sharing their pain.