Tuesday October 13th, 1998

Transsexual mother goes public

Clare Dyer reports on a spouse’s battle to be recognised as female and have her marriage legalised

For nearly 20 years Liz Bellinger has lived an ordinary, anonymous life as the wife of Michael and mother to his daughter, who was left motherless at the age of five when his first wife died.

The couple, who met in a hospital ward where she was a patient and he a visitor, married at a London register office in 1981. Liz “fell in love” with Michael’s daughter, too, and was granted legal custody of her. The three lived together.

But three weeks ago she faced the painful task of telling her daughter, now 24, that the mum who brought her up began life as a boy. After 20 years of sharing her secret only with her husband, Liz is coming out as a transsexual.

She is one of only a handful to have contracted a marriage in Britain - which is invalid by law - in her adopted sex. Almost certainly she is the only one to have been granted custody of a child by a judge who knew the truth.

She has still not plucked up the courage to tell her friends or her husband’s family. She even moved home, from Devon to Lincoln, for fear that a Benefits Agency employee who knew her story would reveal the details to the media. She is going public now because she feels she can no longer keep quiet. Her decision is not personal but political, she insists.

Ms Bellinger wants her marriage legalised. Aged 52 and suffering from the physical effects of a lack of hormones for nine years, following surgery, she thinks her life will be short and she wants to die a woman. She wants it not just for herself but for the 10,000 in Britain who have had a sex change.

But the law has not been on her side. In July, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg rejected, by 11 to 9, two transsexuals who challenged the Government’s refusal to let them amend their birth certificates.

The case was the latest in a series of similar ones dating to 1986. Each time the court has rejected the argument but by an ever narrower margin, and in the latest case the judges signalled that they would like Britain to change the law. Of 40 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, only four refuse to allow transsexuals to re-register their births. But on social issues the Strasbourg court leaves states a wide leeway.

Because her birth certificate says “male”, Ms Bellinger is still a man in the eyes of the law. Though to all outward appearances she is a woman, her chromosomes are male. She knows that by going public, she risks a possible prosecution over her marriage. She was not asked to produce her birth certificate by the registrar but she is described as a spinster on her marriage certificate.

As far as she is concerned, she has done nothing wrong; since her surgery she has regarded herself not as a transsexual but as a woman. Yet she is challenging the authorities to prosecute her to highlight what she believes is a gross injustice. As far back as she can remember, she says, she knew she was the “wrong sex”. In 1971, aged 25, she heard about the gender clinic at Charing Cross hospital in London and asked her GP to refer her. Within an hour she had found herself sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and given electroconvulsive therapy. Eventually she was referred to Charing Cross but it was not until 1980 that she got her surgery.

Last month, she traced the psychiatrist who had misdiagnosed her and extracted an apology from him.

Now she has invited MPs, including the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Health Secretary, and the Chancellor, to a meeting next week in Parliament.

As more transsexuals go public, she says, public opinion is shifting. ITV’s Coronation Street has even helped. It has had a sympathetic story about transsexual Hayley Patterson. Lynne Jones, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak and chairwoman of the parliamentary forum on transsexuality, is tabling an early day motion congratulating the series and asking the Government to alter the law to allow transsexual marriage.

“The public are supporting Hayley,” said Ms Bellinger. “I’m saying - Hayley is a manufactured character… support the real Hayleys who are downtrodden by this government and experiencing a form of imprisonment.”

If ministers fail to turn up to her meeting, she vows she will not leave Parliament voluntarily. “If that means I’m arrested, so be it.”

Michael, her husband, disabled after a work accident years ago, is backing her fight. “I supported her for the last nearly 20 years and I’m with her,” he said.

Copyright © Guardian Media Group plc.1998