Transsexual weddings are condemned
By Jonathan Petre and David Bamber
TRANSSEXUALS are defying God’s will and should not be allowed to alter their birth certificates or get married, an organisation representing more than a million British Christians has told Jack Straw, the Home Secretary.
In a strongly-worded submission timed to coincide with a new Home Office consultation paper, the Evangelical Alliance said that transsexuality was incompatible with “scripture and God’s creation”.
The Home Office paper, to be published next month, will consider plans to allow transsexuals to alter their certificates so that they can marry. Officials fear that the Government will face challenges in the courts if the law is not reformed. But the alliance’s unequivocal intervention, which comes amid mounting controversy about the issue, argued that such a development would be “fundamentally flawed”.
“We affirm God’s love and concern for all humanity, including transsexual people, but believe that human beings are created by God as either male or female and that change from a given sex is not really possible,” it said. The case for transsexuals being allowed to amend their birth certificates was “open to abuse and undermined accepted realities by condoning illusion and denial”. Such a reform would, the submission added, lead to the “unacceptable legitimisation of currently illegitimate ’marriage’ relationships”.
The 50-page document, sent to Mr Straw last week, said that while Christian transsexuals should be welcomed by churches and treated with sensitivity, they should be denied leadership posts and should be encouraged to revert to their original sex. Attacking liberal Christians, the alliance said it was utterly opposed to moves in “church circles” to “accept or endorse” transsexual relationships or allow church services to marry or bless transsexuals. The organisation, whose leaders include senior Anglicans, represents the fastest-growing wing of British Christianity.
A person’s sex is defined in law by their birth certificate, and even if someone born a man becomes a woman, he is still legally classed as male and cannot marry a man. The consultation paper will set out plans to give transsexuals the right to obtain amended birth certificates, which would automatically grant them the legal privileges of their new sex, from social security benefits to inheritance provisions. Other options discussed will range from no change to full legal equality for transsexuals, but officials are understood to favour conferring new rights to avoid a legal challenge when the European Convention on Human Rights is incorporated into British law in October.
The alliance, whose leaders include Viscount Brentford, a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said it was not convinced that transsexuals were born “in the wrong body”. Rather than undergoing “cosmetic” surgery, it said that transsexuals should seek “holistic change” through “acceptance of the gospel of Jesus Christ”.
Britain is one of only four European countries which does not recognise transsexuals in law. The need to re-examine current legislation was underlined last year when the Department for Employment and Education was forced to alter regulations to allow transsexuals to be covered by the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act. This followed a ruling by the European Court of Justice, which said that European law banned the sacking of people simply because they had changed their sex.
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