[Commentary] [UK] Comment: Trans people need equality to get our marriages, confiscated by the state back

[Stephanie Stevens]

Pink News, UK


Comment: Trans people need equality to get our marriages, confiscated
by the state back

by Sarah Brown

19 May 2012, 1:37pm


[Photo: <http://bit.ly/KB2fjP> Sarah Brown is a Lib Dem councillor for
the CambrigeSarah Brown is a Lib Dem councillor for the Cambrige]

Liberal Democrat councillor Sarah Brown explains from the perspective
of a transgendered person why she’s supporting the Out4Marriage
campaign. The current unfair and discriminating system of opposite sex
marriages and same sex civil partnerships has meant that she and her
wife were forced to surrender their marriage and instead consider
themselves ‘civil partners’.

Much has been written on the subject of the government’s marriage
equality consultation. From the perspective of many transgender
people, lots of it misses some key points.

The first question in the consultation refers to “marriage regardless
of gender”. This wording is significant; the government is not asking
about same sex marriage, or even opposite sex civil partnerships. It’s
proposing to remove consideration of sex and gender from the
recognition of marriage, at least as far as civil marriage is
concerned.

This may seem like nitpicking, but precision here matters. What does
it mean to define something as being for “opposite sexes” when man
trans people fall outside the male/female binary? How are we to
interpret marriage between two people of prescribed sexes when that
sex can, to all appearances and as far as the state is concerned,
change?

These are issues that profoundly affect trans people. Those outside
the gender binary are forced to represent themselves as something
they’re not as long as the institutions of marriage and civil
partnerships are defined as being for “opposite sex” and “same sex”
couples (what does it mean to be the opposite of someone who is
genderqueer?) People shouldn’t have to lie about who and what they are
in order to demonstrate a public commitment of their love.

The consultation raises another key point, tucked away on page 14 of
the consultation document under the heading, “Gender Recognition”. In
2004, the Gender Recognition Act was passed. This elder sibling to the
Civil Partnership Act granted transgender people official recognition
of our acquired genders – something which had been formerly lacking.
There’s a catch though. Consider a transgender woman married to a non
transgender woman. As far as the state is concerned, one of these
women is “really” a man (and can be locked up in a men’s prison if
charged with a crime – this happens). The government is able to turn a
blind-eye to the existence of this ostensibly same-sex marriage.

However, it will not grant gender recognition (and with it, the rights
any other woman would have) to this woman while she is still married,
because this would create a true same-sex marriage and the legal
system would disappear in a puff of logic. The government therefore
presents this trans woman and her wife with an impossible choice to
make; your marriage or your rights.

[Video: <http://youtu.be/WYCrMdohBZY> Sarah Brown is trans and is
@Out4Marriage to get her own marriage back]

This trans woman was me, and I made that faustian bargain in 2009,
surrendering my marriage of eight years and, after much bureaucracy,
converting it to a civil partnership. I now bitterly regret doing
that. We had both convinced ourselves that it was just paperwork, and
didn’t really mean anything, but we were wrong. It hurt deeply, and it
still does. We had a wonderful civil partnership ceremony with
friends, but I wish I could take it all back.

The government is proposing to meet us, and those like us, part way
here. We can, it proposes, convert our civil partnership back into a
marriage, and in future those undergoing gender recognition will be
allowed to do so while staying married. However, as proposed it won’t
give me my original marriage back – it’ll just be recognised as far
back as our civil partnership.

I think the government has it wrong here. This will create a “lost
decade” of people, such as ourselves, who can’t have our original
marriages recognised as same-sex marriages. Those coming after can
have such recognition, even if they were married decades ago. There
aren’t many of us in our position, but we do feel very strongly about
being wronged by the unsatisfactory half measure of the 2004 and 2005
acts. If we don’t get our marriages back, many will continue to fight
to have them reinstated.

I will say this in my response to the government’s consultation. My
main fear is that there are so few of us that our voices will be
drowned out by the cacophony of church-manufactured objection to any
measure of LGBT marriage equality at all. Please do fill in the
consultation, and even if you aren’t trans, please ask for the
government to reinstate the marriages it confiscated. This injustice
must end.

Sarah Brown tweets as @AuntySarah <http://www.twitter.com/auntysarah>
. Her Out4Marriage video can be found on YouTube here
<http://youtu.be/WYCrMdohBZY>


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