USA: Rachel Levin, transgender, gets a job from Biden as Secretary of State – Politics Abroad

This has never happened before! US President Joe Biden (78) brings Dr. Rachel Levine, 63, is the first time a transgender woman has held a high-level position in the ministry. As a Secretary of State in the US Department of Health.

Levin was approved by the US Senate on Wednesday. 52 senators voted for Levin and 48 against.

“I am honored to be the first transgender person to hold a Senate-approved position,” Levine said. In her new office, she wants to stand up especially for young transgender people. “I know you face many difficult challenges every day. What I can tell you is: There is a place for you in America and in our government.”

What distinguishes the doctor? And what was Rachel Levin’s life story?

She was born on October 28, 1957 in Massachusetts on the East Coast as Richard L. Levin, a child of a Jewish family. It is said that the father was a doctor, the mother was a lawyer and a sister.

Levin attended a boys-only school, learned Hebrew, and celebrated a bar mitzvah (religious maturity) at the age of 13. In his teenage years: a member of the football and hockey team. But what looks like the biographies of many young people has never felt so much like Levine.

According to the Patriot News, she once said, “All I knew was I wanted to be a girl. Or I was actually a girl or a female.”

But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, gender reassignment was not a problem to talk about comfortably. So: go on, be quiet, focus on other things.

After graduating from high school in the Boston suburb of Belmont, his career took off. Certificate from Harvard University. One is in Tulane University School of Medicine. Pediatric Fellowship and Residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

It is not known exactly where Levin met Martha Beasley. But they’re both medical professionals, and they clearly were deeply in love – and they said yes. Two sons, Dinah and David. 1993 moved to Pennsylvania.

For more than two decades, Levin served in a leadership position at the Pennsylvania State Hershey Medical Center near Harrisburg. There she founded a department of adolescent medicine and an eating disorder clinic, among others. But while Levine was able to help many young people, the identity problems of the family man himself became more and more dramatic.

A successful man in business, married with two children. The emergence of an ideal life. Just what Levine really felt, no one doubted.

“I went through a bad midlife crisis,” she says, looking back. Levine has been in therapy for years and has also gone to meetings for transgender people. Finally, the insight: “What matters is that I decided to live my life without secrets … without fear.”

Life as a woman. As a lesbian woman. How Levine taught this to her family, friends, and co-workers is unknown.

BUT: From 2008 she let her hair grow long, and after three good years, the gender and official name have been changed to Rachel L. Levine. Then in 2013 he divorced his wife Martha, with whom she still remains good friends.

According to media reports, Levine found a new partner after this. And at work, too, things continued just fine. The doctor made political contacts, among other things, to make sure that a specific drug (naloxone) was used against drug overdoses. In 2017, Levin became Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health. To date, Minister of State under the new Minister of Health, Xavier Becera (63).

In January, incoming US President Joe Biden said that Levin was “a very historic and qualified choice.” It brings “the leadership and the critical experience we need to get the population out of this pandemic.”