Tuesday 17th July 2001

Judges to rule on 20-year transsexual marriage

A male-to-female transsexual who married a man 20 years ago is set to hear whether the law will recognise her wedding vows.

Three Court of Appeal judges are giving their ruling after a High Court judge declared Elizabeth Bellinger’s marriage void.

Laura Cox QC, representing Mrs Bellinger, 54, asked the court to re-interpret the law so people like her client are recognised as female.

She said that the definition of sexuality laid down 30 years ago, which depended on chromosomal criteria, was outdated in the light of new scientific and medical evidence.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that there should be no discrimination against a person because they are transsexual and had reprimanded the UK for not keeping under review the legal position of transsexuals in domestic law.

Miss Cox said her client was registered as a male by her father after birth but her mother dressed and treated her as a girl during her early childhood.

Her condition, which Miss Cox described as gender identity disorder, became recognised medically and she began treatment at Charing Cross Hospital in London in 1973, culminating in surgery in 1981 when her male genitalia was removed.

In the same year she married her husband, Michael, the man she had met a year earlier while studying for a degree in economics.

The registrar who married them did not ask her to give any evidence of her sexuality and they had lived together as man and wife for the last 20 years. They now live in Lincoln.

The Attorney General, who opposed the appeal, argued that the evidence does not support the assertion that Mrs Bellinger “is and always has been female or that the medical treatment she has received changed her from a male into a female”.

Story filed: 05:24 Tuesday 17th July 2001

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