The idea of needing another’s ‘consent’ to be who you are is sickening - and it remains sickening even if cases in which it arises are rare. There are principles in play here - and the Bill’s assumptions about whose rights should prevail should the issue ever make an appearance are clear. It’s reminiscent of the era in which a woman needed to get the ‘permission’ of a husband to gain a divorce - whatever the circumstances of the marriage, the ‘right’ of one partner to remain married took precedence over the right of the other even to not be beaten to a pulp. Sometimes.
But there’s worse to come.
It has now come to light that the Act sustains and refreshes a deeply problematic and legally obscure part of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. The government, led by Minster Helen Grant, is aware of this. Could have supported a change, easily, in this major review of marital law. Has refused.
Fresh on the heels of a case in which an individual was found guilty in a British court of ‘obtaining sex by deception’ because he (a trans man who was still biologically female) did not disclose his past to a partner, the Bill does nothing to change the legal requirement for a person with a transsexual past, who has a Gender Recognition Certificate (and potentially even an amended Birth Certificate - both documents that are supposed to be entirely private and held in very secure settings in civil service files) to disclose their gender history to a potential spouse.
Failure to do this can constitute grounds for annulment.
