PRESS RELEASE: Transsexual Leaders Condemn ECHR Decision

Leaders of Press for Change, the UK’s transsexual rights campaign today condemned the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Kristina Sheffield and Rachel Horsham. The court’s decision, announced this morning, rejected the claims of both women that the British Government’s continuing refusal to correct their legal status to reflect their social gender role violates articles 8, 12, 13 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court’s decision is the fourth successive snub which British born trans people have received from the court in ten years. On each previous occasion Mark Rees (1987), Caroline Cossey (1991) and the family of PFC leader Dr Stephen Whittle (1997) failed to persuade the court that the government’s refusal to recognise what the majority of other governments have already recognised should be censured.

Press for Change Vice President, Stephen Whittle, himself a law lecturer, said today..

“Once again the ECHR has failed to recognise the intolerable situation transsexuals in the UK are forced to live with. It is a very sad day for Human Rights throughout Europe but we have never thought that this would be a battle easily won. As far as we are concerned we will continue to fight, not just through the courts, but also in everyday society for transsexual people to have the respect and equality they deserve as full members of our society.”

The Sheffield and Horsham cases both extensively highlighted the discrimination and threats to privacy endured by trans people when they have taken steps to live and present themselves according to their innate gender identity rather than in the sex role assigned to them at birth on a cursory examination of their genitals alone.

Simple acts like obtaining car insurance or arranging a pension are transformed into a nightmare in which the applicant is obliged to reveal details of their medical history and former identity to complete strangers for irrelevant reasons. Relatives of a deceased trans person are even obliged to tidy up their affairs with a death certificate which identifies them in the same way as on their birth certificate. Most find this very distressing.

Yet a recently conducted survey by Liberty, produced specially to brief the judges in this case, highlighted that Britain and Ireland stand virtually alone in Europe on this issue. Of 39 Council of Europe members investigated by Liberty, only Britain and the Republic of Ireland (along with Andorra and Albania) refused to accord an appropriate legal status to trans people once their treatment had been concluded.

“Never mind Coronation Street’s Hayley Patterson”, says PFC campaigner Christine Burns, “This is a problem which affects over 5,000 REAL people in Britain every day of their lives”. “The court was quick enough to rule that a man’s name should be taken off a birth certificate recently, even though it’s hard to see what actual hardship it would cause him. Here we are dealing with REAL problems, REAL embarassment, REAL limitation on the ability for people to get on with their lives in peace and privacy and they don’t want to know. It’s not justice to my mind. It stinks.”

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