From Gay Star News UK: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-people-left-behind-england-and-wales-equal-marriage-bill200513
Married transgender people will need their husband or wife’s permission before they can have their gender recognized
By Helen Belcher
20 May 2013
Imagine: you want to set up a new company but the law requires you to have the written consent of your wife; or you’ve just got pregnant, but you haven’t got a piece of paper with your husband’s signature on it stating he’s OK with that; or you’ve just been involved in a major car accident, sadly without your spouse’s written approval.
Each of these actions, and we can all think of many similar ones, may well change the nature of your existing marriage quite considerably. Hopefully we’d have talked through and gained agreement on these changes beforehand, as far as we’re able.
But the requirement that we need written consent from our spouse would be, quite rightly, treated as an outrage.
Yet that is exactly what is being proposed in the UK government’s same-sex marriage bill for England and wales for trans people in existing marriages. If married, a trans person’s gender recognition will require the written consent of their spouse.
Given that spousal consent is (not yet) required for trans people to undergo surgery or to change their name, to force it to obtain a human right – that of self-determination – seems very one-sided indeed.
The current system is flawed – not least because there is no way for a marriage to continue if a trans spouse wants gender recognition. The ‘spousal veto’ has been proposed because civil servants heard spouses’ current concerns the first they might hear about a gender recognition application was the thud of divorce papers accompanied by an interim gender recognition certificate.
Continue reading at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-people-left-behind-england-and-wales-equal-marriage-bill200513
