PRESS RELEASE: Campaigners step up efforts

6th January, 1996

The Press for Change organisation, lobbying for proper legal recognition of those who have been treated for transsexuality, has launched a nationwide campaign to win backing for the Private Members Bill recently tabled by Alex Carlile. This comes in the wake of a recent recommendation by the European Court of Justice, effectively outlawing employment discrimination against such people. (P vs S and Cornwall County Council).

The campaign (which is urging a network of thousands of pre- and post-operative transsexuals, professionals, families and friends to write to their MP) aims to drive home the message that there is widespread public sympathy for the legal plight of the 4,000 people who’ve undergone treatment in Britain. To accompany it, Press for Change has published a list of almost a hundred sitting MPs and public figures who have received personal visits and information from transsexuals or and their families.

Commenting on the move, Cheshire businesswoman and transsexual campaigner Christine Burns said,

“The international legal community is finally catching up with what medical science has been saying for the last two decades .. which is that whilst we don’t fully understand the cause of the syndrome, Gender Identity Disorder (the medical term for transsexuality) is a specific, diagnosable, condition whose only effective and compassionate treatment involves gender re-assignment. What we need now is for parliamentarians to wake up too.”

She added,

“The treatment has been shown in studies to be up to 95% successful in alleviating a form of distress which, untreated, used to lead to a suicide rate as high as 30%. By far the majority of the 4,000 transsexuals treated in the United Kingdom have gone on to settle invisibly into their communities, paying taxes and being productive citizens. The law, however … dating back to a notorious divorce case in 1970 … takes a very unhelpful view, insisting that we carry our ’official’, unaltered, civil status with us for life.

“The refusal of the goverment to annotate her birth certificate and treat her legally as a woman serves nobody”, she adds … “and is a kick in the teeth for a woman who is an active and much liked supporter of the Conservative party in her constituency.”

The group, originally formed by Tonbridge councillor Mark Rees (who took the government to the European Court in 1986), has already made great strides in educating the public and media, since the narrow defeat of the much-publicised follow-up rights case brought by the model, Caroline Cossey just over five years ago.

“The press is coming round fast to the fact that our treatment has been a scandal”, said Christine, who organised meetings on the fringe of both the Labour and Conservative conferences. “A couple of the tabloids are finding it hard to give up old habits”, she added, “but I was astonished, when I came out publicly for this campaign, to NOT to find myself besieged”. In Blackpool, in fact, Christine said she found herself at one point, running AFTER the journalists!

She thinks that the change in press attitudes has been helped along by the restricted reporting decision which the group won in the tribunal stages of the P vs S and Cornwall County Council case. “We stopped them going for the lurid angle and forced them to think about the issues”, she adds, “… and maybe some of that finally stuck”. The privacy ruling has also enabled the group to initiate a raft of other legal challenges too, which the government has so far elected to defend…

In March, a judicial review hearing will consider the case of a group of transsexuals who are taking this route to try and force the OPCS to annotate their birth certificates. Several of the plaintiffs have obtained legal aid, reflecting a growing view in senior legal circles, that their cases have a probability of success. The European Court has also granted leave in another rights case, involving the parents of children born to the partner of a transsexual man. The children cannot have the man’s name recorded on their birth certificates, on the grounds that the law regards him still as a woman.

“We don’t want blood”, concludes Christine, “just simple justice”. Adding … “We can get it at the public expense, through fighting each of these cases to the bitter end, or we can get it by the simple and tidy legislation proposed by Alex Carlile. As a Conservative, I’d naturally prefer that we saved all that public money by backing Alex”.

The Alex Carlile bill has a second reading on Friday February 2nd.

ENDS

More information about the Press for Change campaign, a review of the ECJ judgement and a profile of Christine Burns can all be found on the Internet at http://www.pfc.org.uk/

Christine Burns can be reached at: editor@pfc.org.uk