In a decision that follows the end of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the State Department has decided to make U.S. passport application forms “gender neutral” by removing references to mother and father.
Likely hoping to diffuse some of the attention this decision was sure to garner, the announcement was buried at the end of a December 22 news release, titled “Consular Report of Birth Abroad Certificate Improvements,” that highlighted unrelated security changes.
Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, called the news “a positive step for all American families. It was time that the federal government acknowledged the reality that hundreds of thousands of kids in this country are being raised by same-sexx parents.”