The purpose of this petition is to call for an Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits all levels of government from recognizing or imposing any categories of gender or sex other than "male" and "female".

Right now, the United States is going through a period of social upheaval on account of so-called "bathroom bills" that affect transgender people. Regardless of whether these bills are legitimate or not, there is an even greater conflict coming that must be prevented before it begins. Today certain people in America consider themselves "intersex", "genderqueer", "genderfluid", etc. Sometimes this is because of their actual physical characteristics -- i.e., they may be hermaphrodites, or they may have very gender-indeterminate appearances. Other times this is because of their sense of self-identification -- i.e., they do not feel truly male or female, or perhaps they feel they are both, or maybe they feel male at certain times and female other times.

As the current conflict over the "bathroom bills" demonstrates, our legal system is barely capable of handling the stress of dealing with cases in which people wish to switch between the two recognized genders/sexes -- "male" and "female". How will the American legal system deal with people who, for whatever reason, wish to see themselves declared "both", "neither", "other", "fluid", etc., thereby greatly complicating an already vexing matter even further? Will the executive administration at that time issue "guidelines" dictating that a person may choose to use whatever restroom he or she -- or "zhe", to use an example of a gender-nonconforming pronoun -- desires at any particular time, depending on his/her/zher self-identification at that moment? Will the executive administration at that time perhaps forbid the mention of gender at all in public schools, even as some schools are receiving recommendations to do so from private activist organizations (e.g., calling children "purple penguins" rather than "boys and girls")?

Silly as this may sound, this is no laughing matter. Twenty-five years ago, gay marriage was considered an absurdity. Now gay marriage is legal in every state.

Legal challenges to the traditional categories of gender and sex *will* occur in the near future, and as the Supreme Court has demonstrated this year, we cannot rely on our courts to protect gender confusion from becoming enshrined in our laws. Only Congress can save us from the chaos to come by proactively passing a Constitutional Amendment, tentatively worded as follows:

"Neither the United States, nor any State or local government, shall recognize or impose any categories of gender or sex other than 'male' and 'female'."

Please join me in petitioning House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to *immediately* propose this Amendment in Congress assembled. We cannot afford to wait for the courts to decide our country's fate for us. Not again.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you will add your signature.