Gender Recognition Act 2004

Having said that, Croft implied that there may come a point where sufficient medical intervention had been done, where an entitlement may arise or where a failure to provide access to female only facilities could amount to gender reassignment discrimination.

But the Court of Appeal was very clear in this case that that statement was predating what individuals and courts knew at the time that this case was decided which was that parliament was about to consider this issue in the form of the gender recognition act and so that tentative claim that there may come a point where use of single-sex facilities would become an entitlement if an individual had undergone sufficient medical intervention in the form of surgery And that was on the premise that Parliament would be considering this issue later on.

And that is exactly what Parliament did, although it didn't specifically consider the question of single sex spaces.

So in 2004, Parliament enacted the Gender Recognition Act, which gave effect to the human right that transgender people have to legal recognition of their acquired gender or their acquired sex in certain circumstances.

Now, the right to gender recognition is protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

So it's a qualified right.

And what that means is there'll be some circumstances where States are under an obligation to give effect to an individual's gender identity or their change in sex or change in gender as far as the law is concerned.

But there may be other circumstances where states are not under an obligation to do that, where, for example, the rights of others may be engaged or where there's a pressing social need that would justify retaining recognition of an individual's biological sex.

And 2004 was also notable for an act of Parliament that would have a profound and very positive impact on trans and non-binary people.

It was the Gender Recognition Act 2004, by which a Gender Recognition Certificate could be obtained.

One immediate effect was to be able to apply for a passport with one's sex in alignment with one's gender identity, which tragically now is no longer available to US citizens.

However, to be granted a Gender Recognition Certificate required a degree of gymnastics, given the hoops required to jump through.

It was, of course, the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, which were a fantastic success.

If only we were now more united and not prone to prejudice.

With the passing of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, trans people could marry.

But if you're a lesbian or gay and cisgender, you still couldn't get married.

That's one of the things that I think should happen.

I think the Gender Recognition Act could be clarified.

Also, I would support the European Court of Human Rights ruling as well.

There's-

So how did we get here?

We got here because when asked to look into it, the Supreme Court concluded that there was a contradiction between the Equalities Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which sounds very, very knotty.

But basically, for quite a long time, there was a thing that if you had a gender recognition certificate under law, if you were a, you know, trans man who'd transitioned from being a woman, you were treated under law as being a man and vice versa.

But there was a small number of cases in which, you know, predatory men would game the system by self-identifying as a trans woman-

This week, I read a number of disturbing examples of our culture's concerted efforts to erase all traces of what scripture teaches about sex and gender.

For example, in 2004, the UK passed the Gender Recognition Act.

It says if you live for two years as someone of the opposite sex, you can apply for a gender recognition certificate, and eventually, a new birth certificate.

In 2015, New York City, here in our own country, made it illegal to insist on calling someone by pronouns other than the ones that they have chosen, and breaking this guideline comes with up to a $250,000 fine.

And if you actually read it further, if you're neither male or female, nor solely male or female, and they've also sort of included gender, gender, whatever, genderqueer, gender, whatever, you know, they're really following Stonewall on this.

Now, it's quite interesting that the Gender Recognition Act specifically excludes non-binary.

It states that in the Gender Recognition Act, a person can change their sex from either male to female or vice versa.

But it makes no provision for the recognition of any other gender.

So this bill is trying to bring in something that the Gender Recognition Act never had.

Now, the Gender Recognition Act was badly written.

If you've ever read Hansard, they basically ignored anything from women.

But it specifically excluded non-binary.

And we had some of the same kind of stuff in the hate crime bill where you're sort of looking to legislate against the outcome rather than trying to address the underlying issues that create that outcome.

personally I've not got into the detail of the kind of misogyny bill to any great detail I know it's something that's been talked about a lot and it was mentioned in the kind of previous session of the Scottish Government it didn't come to anything again I think this is one of these ones that you will potentially see similar kind of things to what you saw in the kind of Gender Recognition Act getting into the mushi of that and the potential implications more widely and you know avoiding the risk of effectively criminalising thought or more than that actually deriving or inferring people's reasoning for taking certain positions based on this legislation.

Yeah, I think it is that thing where are we using the justice system to try and control people's thinking or are we using the justice system to try and control people's behaviour? I think that's where I have a problem with it, but maybe that's more fundamental.

I think it's more a question of if you want to address misogyny, do you do that through creating more laws you have to enforce or do you do that through policy and how it is addressed culturally? Yeah.