PRESS RELEASE: Transsexuals reject "Anti-discrimination" paper

Hundreds of transsexual people are contacting their MP’s and writing to the Department for Education and Employment to angrily reject proposals contained in a consultation document which ministers commissioned to outlaw discrimination against them.

Press for Change, the UK’s transsexual rights lobby, began instructing its’ supporters to get out and protest last week, when the DfEE issued a “consultation” paper ostensibly intended to integrate last year’s European Court of Justice ruling on employment rights with the Sex Discrimination Act.

“This paper isn’t about protecting us from society”, says PFC spokeswoman Christine Burns, “It seems to be about protecting society from us”

The paper suggests that it should be legal to prevent transsexual people from being employed in any jobs dealing with people under the age of eighteen, or in professions involving intimate contact with members of the public.

“No other group in British society has been singled out this way in living memory” continues Burns. “The majority of countries have now acted to integrate transsexual people into their societies, but this document seems hell bent on setting us apart”.

“It’s an insult. The government wants to declare me a statutory pervert and we demand that the minister withdraws these proposals and exercises the manners, instead, to ask us what we actually need”

Press for Change legal expert, Stephen Whittle, adds

“The whole principle of this proposal is wrong. We already have the employment protection we need. The European Court of Justice Ruling in the case of P vs S and Cornwall County Council says that the Sex Discrimination Act protects transsexual people from discrimination, and we’ve already shown that it works perfectly well that way in the courts.”

“The only purpose of these proposals is to water down the rights we’ve already won.”

“If they really DO think there are problems in interpretation, the solution is to accord us the simple straightforward legal recognition we’ve been demanding to have BACK for nearly thirty years.”

Press for Change is asking ministers to check whether some sort of mistake has been made at the ministry. Christine Burns, again ..

“We wonder if this proposal was written during the last administration and sent out in error. We’re asking the minister of state to check whether this was what he’d intended an anti-discrimination paper to say”

Meanwhile, however, the Press for Change web site has been inundated with people from around the world, downloading the proposals to read, and the organisation has printed 2,500 copies to mail out to its supporters this week.

“If they want feedback, we’ll give them feedback”, says Whittle, defiantly

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