The S9316 bill promoted by the Democratic Party in New York is just a signature away from taking effect. On the surface, it’s simply changing the terminology in some legal texts from gender-specific terms like “father” and “mother” to gender-neutral terms like “gestational parent” and “non-gestational parent”. However, for many people, this not only means removing basic emotional vocabulary like “dad” and “mom” from legal language, but also symbolizes the government’s priorities in the political landscape.
This legislation has sparked heated discussions within the Chinese community, with doubts quickly spreading in various WeChat groups. Some believe that this is about making legal language more inclusive and that the amendment is a “vital need” for certain non-traditional families; while most criticize it as a typical case of wasting resources, where political correctness overrides governance needs.
One focal point of the controversy is that the beneficiaries are few, but the entire administrative system may have to bear high costs. The 2021 lawsuit against the New York welfare system for not providing an X gender option is a precedent, demonstrating that language updates are not as simple as “changing a few words”, but require comprehensive adjustments in the entire management system, databases, forms, and personnel training.
For instance, the field for “father/mother” that needs a comprehensive modification may involve government software updates and inter-departmental coordination, with costs running into millions of dollars. The government acknowledged in the X gender case that the upgrade costs were particularly tight against the financial impact of the pandemic.
Such cases also illustrate that once new concepts are recognized by laws or policies, the legal pressure to add complementary measures, increase classifications, and modify procedures often follows. When laws recognize new identity classifications, the administrative system must keep up comprehensively, or else it may face discrimination lawsuits.
Therefore, public policy cannot just answer the question of “whether to recognize”, but must also address “what the cost is” and “what the priority should be”. While issues like public safety, education, housing affordability, and tax burdens continue to trouble New York residents, many voters see the government busy changing terms like “mom” and “dad”, making it understandable why there is public backlash. After all, for most families, what they urgently need to improve is not vocabulary, but their quality of life.