Judge backs gay equal rights

Judge backs gay equal rights

Couples have called for legal recognition

Same-sex couples should have their partnerships recognised by law, England's most senior judge has said.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss also told an audience in London transsexuals should have the right to marry in an assumed gender.

She said society was "failing the family" as couples who cannot marry have no legal protection for partnerships, sometimes lifelong, that create family structure.

Dame Elizabeth also criticised how the killers of toddler Jamie Bulger were dealt with, saying there was a "punitive" approach towards child offenders, in the lecture at King's College reported in the Daily Telegraph.

As President of the High Court Family Division, she granted lifetime anonymity to Jon Venables and Robert Thompson - who have both since assumed new identities.

Children's rights

She welcomed government plans to give same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples, including access to a partner's pension.

"The present situation is a continuing breach of the right of same-sex partners to have a legal framework within which to make and to maintain their family life," she said.

And England was the only country, other than Albania, where transsexuals were denied legal recognition of their change of gender, even after surgery, she said.

The government is due to unveil proposals for legally-recognised civil partnerships this summer.

There is already a register for gay couples in London - but it does not confer legal rights.

She called for more rights for children saying she was concerned England had almost the highest number in western Europe of young people under 18 in young offender institutions.

"When one looks at the state of children - whether they are in care, in trouble, or in separating families - the conclusion is inescapable: children have a right to expect better," she said.

She said she was certain that had Jamie Bulger's killers been identified they would have been seriously injured or killed.

Dame Elizabeth was delivering the Paul Sieghart Memorial Lecture.