Transsexual loses marriage case (BBC)

UK

Transsexual loses marriage case

A transsexual has failed to overturn a High Court ruling that declared her 20-year marriage invalid.

Three Court of Appeal judges upheld a ruling by a High Court judge in November last year that Elizabeth Bellinger’s marriage was void.

Male-to-female transsexual Elizabeth Bellinger had petitioned the High Court for legal recognition of her marriage to husband Michael.

Elizabeth Bellinger, 54, from Lincoln, went through a sex change operation in 1981 and, as Elizabeth, married Michael Bellinger in the same year.

We are talking about a 20-year marriage that could be non-existent if we just leave this

Elizabeth Bellinger

Mrs Bellinger said after the ruling: “We are now going to consider an appeal to the House of Lords.”

She said she was disappointed that an “opportunity to correct a great injustice for a lot of people” had not been taken.

“I feel very hurt but at the same time we are not stopping. This goes on.

“We are talking about a 20-year marriage that could be non-existent if we just leave this,” she added,

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the Family Division, said that the case highlighted a “human problem”.

The court was “very much aware of the plight of those who, like the appellant, are locked into the medical condition of transsexualism”.

But she said that as the law now stood, Mrs Bellinger could not be recognised as a female and therefore her marriage to her husband, Michael, was invalid.

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