As Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I’m happy to return the Department to its mission-minded focus of helping the most vulnerable and often-forgotten Americans find affordable homes.
That’s why, in February, I stopped enforcement of the 2016 rule “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs.”
The Equal Access Rule imposed gender ideology on HUD-supported shelters and other institutions — forcing them to cater to individuals’ so-called “gender identity.”
Scott Turner
But President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order stating that America’s new policy is “to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
I was happy to put into practice this commonsense directive by taking action against the Equal Access Rule and getting government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image.
Gender ideology flies in the face of objective, biblical truth. It also sacrifices real efforts to help American families on the altar of far-left ideology — and endangers women by forcing them to share housing with men who claim they “identify” as the opposite sex.
And this isn’t just a hypothetical danger. In 2024, a male resident — who “identifies” as a female — of the Shepherd’s Gate shelter for women in Greenville, S.C., stabbed a female employee working for the shelter. Although the victim survived, her case shows the dangers of allowing men to invade women’s spaces.
The Trump administration has been working hard in its first 100 days to help vulnerable Americans, make the American Dream accessible to all, and restore biblical truth in our country. Promoting gender ideology actively threatens those important goals, and the administration will continue rooting it out.
Scott Turner serves as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is a former member of the pastoral staff at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
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