Genitalia match genetic sex in the vast majority of cases.
There are plenty of places where laws are flawed. Laws are designed to handle the vast majority of cases. They are meant to be practical.
Anyway, the point is, if the problem is with how to handle the exception to the rule, the < 5% with ambiguous gender, then the author of the editorial should make that argument, but saying that there is "no basis in science" for the proposed legislation is ridiculous and obviously ideologically driven.
No one is denying that the vast majority of humans fall mostly into one of two biological sex clusters and identify in a way which historically corresponds to the way people in that cluster have been externally ascribed a gender, so that's a strawman.
> and trying to engineer the laws around a small percentage that want to be differently identified is the social engineering.
Yes, the movement to align ascribed gender with gender identity is social engineering, no less than the attempt to reverse the movement made in that direction is. Virtually no one involved in the effort denies that, either.
One side is trying to engineer to remove a palpable source of harm, the other to restore it.
But it seems you either do not understand or do not support that. That's far over 90% you have to appeal to, not just those who happen to have a horse in the race. That's not a strawman argument, it's a viable figure of speech.
> a palpable source of harm
If bio and virtual gender are different, then virtual gender should remain unphased by a notion of bio gender.
Since you seem to be in disagreement about that, your position appears conflicting so that any interpretation is naturally a strawman, but provocating clarification. Same as:
> the other [side is trying] to restore it [harm].
What exactly is the "practicality" behind making legal gender compulsory? What purpose does it serve?
And conversely, what harm is there in making legal gender optional?
Losing the distinctions in those laws would mostly be a net win for society.
For those that address a real need with sex distinction, if any, you can just define things in terms relevant to the law rather than a general purpose “legal gender” and have better laws without externally imposing broad gender labels.
If having a draft is good for society, especially a limited, skills-based draft (one of the things that the selective service system in principle supports), then excluding women from registration for it an exposure is a net loss (even if you might also benefit from excluding or limiting exposure of people who might bear children in the future to the type of mass draft used for, e.g., the world wars.)
> But while we still have such laws there has to be a legal definition of gender
The question was “what is the harm of making legal gender optional?” Obsoleting distinctions in law that are not themselves beneficial is not a harm.
Deliberately choosing some aspect(s) of biological sex as ascribed gender and giving it special legal status isn't science, it's social engineering.
> Also, if people understand that the gender on a birth certificate is genetics based
That's not the proposal; the proposal is genitalia at birth compared to sex stereotypes with genetics resorted to only with ambiguous genitalia. But since it's possible for genetics (at the XX v. XY level, and even ignoring other combinations) to mismatch genitalia at birth without genitalia that would be ambiguous (unless one simply defines all genitalia as ambiguous), this is not equivalent to being based on genetics.