Transsexuals allowed to marry

Elizabeth and Michael Bellinger will be able to marry

Transsexuals will be allowed to marry and apply for replacement birth certificates showing their new genders, ministers said on Friday.

The Lord Chancellor's Department made the historic announcement following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in July which said current UK law breached transsexuals' human rights.

The UK was one of only four countries in Europe - Albania, Andorra and the Irish Republic being the others - which did not recognise a sex change as legally valid.

For nearly 33 years, since a court judgment took away our rights in 1970, we have been non-people

Claire McNab
Press For Change

Claire McNab, of transsexual campaign group Press for Change, called for the legislation to be introduced as fast as possible.

"Every day without new legislation is another day where our families go unrecognised and our privacy continues to be breached," she said.

However, Don Horrocks, of the Evangelical Alliance, said: "The reality is that it is not possible for a person to change their sex."

"Therefore any ensuing `marriage' of transsexual people of the same sex could not be regarded as marriage - at least from a Christian perspective, since it would not be between one woman and one man," he added.

Employment rights

Former bus driver Christine Goodwin, 65, and another woman known only as I won their separate fights to be legally recognised as women and the right to marry at the European Court of Human Rights in July.

Both women also argued their legal status in relation to employment, social security and pensions was unjust.

Under British law, a woman can collect a state pension at 60, while a man must wait until he is 65.

The Strasbourg court's unanimous judgement held that the UK's failure to recognise Ms Goodwin's new identity in law breached her rights to privacy and marriage under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The reality is that it is not possible for a person to change their sex

Don Horrocks
Evangelical Alliance

Ms Goodwin's solicitor Robin Lewis said the court had shown the UK law to fall "far short of the standards for human dignity and human freedom in the 21st century".

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said the original birth certificate, with the original gender, would remain in existence but a duplicate would be created for official records.

He said government agencies, such as the Criminal Records Bureau, would be able to see the original certificate but anyone else making enquiries would only be shown the certificate with the new gender on.

This meant that if a man dating a transsexual became curious about "her" he would not be able to find out she had been born a man unless he was able to guess what her name had been at birth.

Draft bill due

Minister Rosie Winterton said: "Our legislation will enable transsexual people confidently to take up those rights which have been denied to them in society - including the right to marry in their acquired gender - whilst preserving other obligations entered into in the original gender.

"If democracies are measured by how they treat their minorities then I believe it is absolutely right that the 5,000-strong transsexual community be afforded the same rights enjoyed by the other millions of us in the UK."

She said a draft bill would be published in due course but she was unable to indicate when the law may change.

News of the announcement came a month before a transsexual was due to go to the House of Lords to argue for the right to marry.

Elizabeth Bellinger, a 55-year-old male to female transsexual, was given permission to appeal after the High Court upheld a ruling that her 20 -year marriage to Michael Bellinger was invalid.