2009: Harriet Harman is squeamish about trans women and so lets the Equality Act get drafted in a sloppy and ambiguous way.
2010: The coalition government passes it and can’t be arsed to read the damned thing, despite trans people (and I was one of them) waving frantically at MPs and senior civil servants.
A decade of dominoes fall…
2025: “I know he was goosestepping past the water cooler yelling ‘Heil Hitler’, but the courts have decided that the Equality Act means we can’t fire him.”
Guys, some of us tried. 🤷🏻♀️
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Oh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
THEY WERE WARNED.
... show moreOh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
THEY WERE WARNED.
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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖, Terra Field, Quixoticgeek, Shinydan, Kathleen Jones, George Potter, fak, Jen Fizzbuzz, "You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. and laurocerasus :autism: reshared this.
tygerprints
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Well here in baboon-butt red Utah a small minded white ass bigot just helped get a law passed forbidding trans people from using any restroom in a public building that doesn't conform to the sex they were assigned on their birth certificate.
This without any proof that trans people are in any way doing anything harmful in bathrooms other than - well, using them to go to the bathroom.
I'm gay myself, but when I go to a restroom I go there to pee or poop. That's it. And I expect to be left alone and have privacy. But who keeps wanting to get into our drawers and check out our junk? It's the straight bigots out there.
In most cases where I've felt threatened in public bathrooms it was by leering straight guys, not by anyone on our "side of the fence."
Anyway I don't envy the white "perfect" human who gets the job of checking out the sex designation on other people's birth certificates whenever they use a public restroom.
Kim Vandry
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Thanks for the info, I didn't know about this.
I read through the amendment to the GRA at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/30/schedule/5 but the understanding I took away from that is that the Spousal Consent provisions that are the subject of that amendment apply exactly the same to heterosexual marriages as they do to homosexual ones: the text just uses the term "protected marriage". I don't think it matters which piece of legislation that schedule happened to ride with, the schedule itself applies only to the GRA 2004 and doesn't distinguish types of marriage. IANAL though, of course.
You did mention however that the worrying bit comes from the rationale, which I unfortunately didn't find. Nonetheless, if it's in the rationale but not in the law, then does it matter?
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013
www.legislation.gov.ukSarah Brown
in reply to Kim Vandry • •Kim Vandry
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Oh definitely! I have no trouble believing those were the people in the room, forming the momentum behind those changes. Largely that'll have just been due to the dominant demographic at the time of who was transitioning at an age old enough to be likely to have spouses who could get upset.
But there's clearly a massive gap between being upset and inventing the preposterous and homophobic notion of "legally gay"!
Sarah Brown
in reply to Kim Vandry • •Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Kim Vandry • •Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexandra Lanes • •Alexandra Lanes likes this.