UK Trans* Law Reform Published

PlanetOut News Staff
Thursday, July 27, 2000 / 01:43 AM

Recommendations from the Home Office for further comment and study include full recognition of transsexulas in their reassigned sexes.

Britain’s Home Office on July 26 published recommendations for law reforms affecting transsexuals.  They were developed by a government Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People set up in April 1999, composed entirely of bureaucrats, and including representatives from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as England.  The panel used estimates that there may be 2 - 5,000 transsexuals in the UK, more than 80% of them male-to-female.  Home Secretary Jack Straw introduced the publication saying, “As I know from my constituency casework, the journey which individuals face when they find that they have been born with the wrong gender can be deeply distressing and depressing for them.  We have to approach their circumstances with compassion and care.  This report seeks to do just that.  We will welcome public comment on it before coming to firm conclusions on its recommendations.”

The Interdepartmental Working Group was instructed “To consider, with particular reference to birth certificates, the need for appropriate legal measures to address the problems experienced by transsexual people, having due regard to scientific and societal developments and measures undertaken in other countries to deal with this issue.”  Based on expert testimony, the panel proceeded on the understanding that transsexualism is biologically based.  The report offers three broad options: to maintain the current laws; to issue new birth certificates to transsexuals; and to fully recognize the individual’s new identity.

Christine Burns, vice president of the national transgender advocacy group Press for Change, said, “This is an historic day for transsexual people in the UK.  Thirty years ago a court judgment made us non-persons.  Since then, successive governments have opposed our efforts to use the courts to restore our legal recognition.  Now the government has finally acknowledged that there is a problem.  It has also proposed solutions, although it acknowledges that more work is needed in the details.  It is time to act on the report’s findings and finally give us legal recognition in our reassigned sexes.”

Press for Change was one of six transgender groups to provide comments and materials to the Working Group, which heard from a total of 99 individuals, most of them transsexuals and their families and friends.

Currently, post-surgical transsexuals can already have their new identities recognized for purposes including driver’s licenses, National Health Service identification and passports, but they are unable to obtain new birth certificates.  Britain has maintained that the birth certificate is a permanent record of what was recognized at the time of the birth, and a lawsuit to change that failed in the European Court of Human Rights.  Partly as a result transsexuals can legally marry only in their sex as identified at birth (and it’s a disputed matter in the Church of England as well).

While considering various options for issuing new birth certificates, the panel wrote that, “We were very doubtful whether there could be a half-way house between the present position and full legal recognition for all purposes.”

One concern was people who might transition from one sex to the other only to switch back again.  The transgender groups recommended a two-stage recognition process, the first being a statutory declaration similar to ones made when people change their names, which would allow for changing most documents in civil life.  This status would continue for not less than two years, corresponding to the period during which transsexuals are asked to live in their target gender before undergoing sex reassignment surgery.  The transgender groups believed this so-called “real-life test” would identify essentially everyone likely to “revert” to living in their birth sex.  Those with this status would be barred from marrying or recording parental status in their target sex.  At any point after two years, individuals at least 18 years old with confirmation from a physician could apply for a Gender Confirmation Certificate, which would look like a birth certificate but which would be recorded in a Gender Confirmation Certificate Register similar to an adoption register.  At that point they would be recognized for all purposes in their target sex.

The panel considered possible pre-conditions for full legal recognition, including sterilization and dissolution of pre-transition marriages.  The transgender groups argued strongly against both these preconditions.  Most transsexuals are rendered sterile by hormone treatment anyway, although there is the possibility of storing eggs or sperm from before transition.  The groups were able to cite some legal and even religious exceptions to the definition of marriage as a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman, and maintained that those rare transpeople remaining married to their pre-transition partners should be treated as an “accepted anomaly” rather than viewed as undermining current law or setting a precedent for “same-sex marriage.”  (The transgender groups wrote that the contracting of legal marriages between same-gender couples “would remain a separate issue, which we hope that the law will one day accommodate, but it is not what we are seeking here.”)

The panel believed that transsexuals under full recognition in their reassigned sex would retain all existing parental rights and responsibilities from before their transitions, and would also be able to acquire new parental rights and responsibilities in their reassigned sex.  The birth certificates of their children born before their transitions would not be changed.

However, even full recognition would not mean a complete erasure of the individual’s pre-surgical past, as the panel noted that disclosure might be necessary for such purposes as criminal background checks.

The 65-page report also discusses a wide range of other issues from social security to sports.

The UK has made great strides in the last few years in accepting and understanding transsexuals, particularly in the workplace.  European and British court rulings have viewed discrimination against transsexuals as illegal sex discrimination, particularly in the workplace, where transsexuals last year gained explicit legal protection in the UK .  In a growing number of instances employers have demonstrated sensitivity and good will as well as legal compliance when workers undergo transition, even when the individuals worked in primary schools or, in one famous recent instance, as a Church of England priest.

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