Governmentgenderlaw move sparks criticism
PLANNED REFORMS to gender recognition legislation that included allowing trans people in England and Wales to formally self-identify without obtaining a medical diagnosis will no longer go ahead, prompting a range of criticism from the Jewish community.
Equalities Minister Liz Truss said on Tuesday that the current law — the 2004 Gender Recognition Act — struck the correct balance between achieving “proper checks and balances in the system” and supporting the trans community.
But professor Rosa Freedman, an expert in human rights law at the University of Reading who has been critical of self-identification, said the move failed to provide clarity “for religious individuals who need sex-segregated spaces for their religious practice”.
Contrasting criticism came from LGBT+ groups and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which argued that the refusal to reform the law was a missed opportunity.
Liberal Judaism’s interim director Rabbi Charley Baginsky accused the government of ignoring the wishes of trans and non-binary people.
She told the JC: “In failing to introduce meaningful reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, the government is not only ignoring the wishes of trans and non-binary people but also the overwhelming majority of those who responded to the government’s own consultation supporting self-identification.” “Liberal Judaism will continue to campaign, alongside our allies, for the significant and positive changes that had been promised so that everyone can live their lives how they choose and with dignity and respect,” she said.
Prof Freedman, meanwhile, pointed to ongoing uncertainty for religious minorities.
She said: “We don’t know whether from a religious point of view people who are born male but identify as trans women are able to access women’s changing rooms or able to go to allgirls schools, and until we have certainty and clarity about that there is still going to be difficulties for religious individuals who need sex-segregated spaces for their religious practice.” Ms Truss said the government would bring the process of changing gender online and replace the £140 application cost with a “nominal” fee. She also announced the opening of three gender clinics this year which she said would cut waiting lists by around 1,600 by 2022.
“We want transgender people to be free to live and to prosper in a modern Britain,” she said. “We have also come to understand that gender recognition reform, though supported in the consultation undertaken by the last government, is not the top priority for trans people.”