Secretary of State Marco Rubio has frozen all applications for passports with “X” gender markers, an option available to people who don’t identify as male or female that was started in the Biden administration. He also ordered staff to suspend applications that involve a change in gender marker.

The Guardian accessed an internal State Department cable from Rubio to department staff yesterday that said the country’s policy is now “that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”

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“Sex, and not gender, shall be used” for all official documents including passports, Rubio’s email says, and it orders staff to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker.”

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The email referenced one of Donald Trump’s executive orders from earlier in the week, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which says that there are only two sexes, determined by the size of one’s reproductive cells.

The order directs all federal government departments and agencies to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” It also says, “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology” and instructs the Bureau of Prisons to revise its policies to ensure that federal inmates do not receive “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order states. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”

The Biden administration started issuing “X” passports several months after President Joe Biden took office.

“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” said then-Special Diplomatic Envoy for LGBTQ Rights Jessica Stern at the time.

“Offering a third gender marker is a significant step towards ensuring that our administrative systems account for the diversity of gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics,” she said. “Because people do not always fit within a male or a female designation, it doesn’t benefit anyone to have inconsistencies between people and systems.”

That same year, then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the State Department would make it easier for transgender individuals to correct the gender marker on their passports by lifting the requirement for medical certification of one’s gender identity.

“We also value our continued engagement with the LGBTQI+ community, which will inform our approach and positions moving forward,” he said in a statement at the time. “With this action, I express our enduring commitment to the LGBTQI+ community today and moving forward.”

The White House said earlier this week that existing passports will not be invalidated by the order, but they will have to reflect a person’s “God-given sex, which was decided at birth” when renewed.

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