Switching gender set to be made easier even though just one in five support law change
THERESA May is to press ahead with plans to make it easier and cheaper for people to change gender, despite overwhelming public opposition.
Fewer than one in five voters – just 18 per cent – support a change in the law to allow people to ‘selfidentify’ as another gender without the intervention of a doctor.
Among Tory voters, support for ‘selfidentification’ falls to only 13 per cent, according to a poll commissioned by the LGBT website PinkNews.
A consultation on gender assignment was launched by the Prime Minister yesterday. At present, in order to receive a ‘gender recognition certificate’ to replace their birth certificate, people who wish to change their sex must secure the confirmation of a doctor.
The doctor must confirm they have ‘gender dysphoria’, a condition whereby someone’s birth sex is harming their mental health. Applicants must also provide a second medical report, outlining details of treatment received.
The process currently costs £140. The consultation will ask if this fee should be scrapped.
The Government says it wants to move towards self-identification as is done in other countries, including Ireland. The consultation will also consider whether the need for a transgender person to obtain the consent of their spouse should be scrapped.
Mrs May said: ‘Transgender people across the UK find the process of legally changing their gender overly bureaucratic and invasive.
‘I want to see a process that is more streamlined and de-medicalised – because being trans should never be treated as an illness.’ She also pledged to listen to concerns that men who self-identify as women would be able to use female changing rooms or toilets. ‘Many women do have concerns about this – this is precisely why we consult,’ Mrs May told ITV News.
She admitted she had ‘developed her view’ on LGBT issues after previously voting against moves to equalise the age of consent, and now wanted to ‘be seen as an ally of the LGBT community’.
But a YouGov poll commissioned by PinkNews found there is significant public opposition to the selfidentification policy, with only 18 per cent supporting it. The result was only slightly higher among Labour voters, with 24 per cent backing the move. Benjamin Cohen, chief executive of PinkNews, said: ‘Despite the relatively low levels of support for the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, this should not discourage the Government from acting.
‘Being a leader means being in front of your people and that it is why it is right that the Prime Minister has already given her clear support for de-medicalising the gender recognition process. It is just a shame that nearly a year has elapsed between the Prime Minister pledging her support for trans rights at the PinkNews Awards and now opening the longawaited consultation.
‘The delay has created a vacuum during which a misinformation campaign has been mounted by opponents to transgender rights.’
Yesterday Mrs May said any changes will not affect provisions in the Equality Act 2010, which permit single-sex services such as women’s refuges to exclude transgender people if this is proportionate and justified.
The 16-week public consultation will assess whether there is a need to change rules which require applicants to provide the two medical reports. It will also ask whether there is a need to obtain the consent of their spouse if married, to demonstrate that they have lived in their acquired gender for at least two years, and to pay the £140 fee.
Equalities minister Penny Mordaunt said: ‘The discrimination and bigotry that the trans community currently faces is unacceptable in today’s society – we need a culture change.’
‘The delay has created a vacuum’
THIS paper accepts that some who have had sex changes find the process of acquiring official recognition of their new gender over-bureaucratic and distressing.
The Mail also shares the widespread condemnation of ‘gay conversion therapy’ – the fraudulent ‘treatment’ undergone by those wanting to change their sexual orientation.
Just one question: with Brexit at a critical stage, the public finances still mired in debt and the NHS rocked by yet another scandal involving unexplained deaths, haven’t ministers more pressing demands on their time than charging into the highly sensitive minefield of minority sexual politics? The words ‘displacement activity’ spring to mind. AS the hearts of billions all over the world go out to those 12 schoolboys and their football coach trapped in a cave in northern Thailand, nothing more graphically illustrates how common humanity knows no frontiers. But there’s cause for quiet national pride, too, in the fact that the heroes who found them alive were modest Britons, the bravest and best in their field. This paper joins the world in saluting them – and praying that their efforts to free the 13 will succeed.