Category: Legal
Thank the Lord for some common sense. In this case, thank Lord Hodge, who yesterday* delivered the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that trans women are not biologically female.
Extraordinary as it is that such an obvious statement requires an 88-page judgment, compiled over many months by the highest court of appeal in the country, this decision is crucial.
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that a woman is someone whose sex is female. The judgment, handed down this morning by Lord Hodge, sought to establish coherence in an area of law that has become the focus of an emotional, and sometimes heated debate. For that we should all be grateful.
Kevin Lister has lost his case at an employment tribunal in Bristol. I am not surprised. The former maths teacher was dismissed by New College Swindon for gross misconduct in September 2022 after he failed to refer to one of his students by their preferred name or pronoun.
A transgender judge has resigned, apparently because of the risk of politicising the judiciary. But this was no ordinary judge. Victoria McCloud is a King’s Bench Master of the High Court, a senior job. In 2010, McCloud – then aged 40 – was the youngest person to have been appointed to the role. The news was not trumpeted at the time as a ‘first’ for transgender people. Few people knew about McCloud’s unusual history and, it seemed, fewer cared.
Categories
Toilet politics needn’t be difficult
August is traditionally the silly season in politics but we seem to be stuck in silly decade of policy, and not in a funny way. Even ten years ago, few might have imagined that the minister for equalities would have needed to open up a debate on toilets. Yesterday*, Kemi Badenoch announced that the government is publishing draft guidance that will protect the dignity, privacy and safety of all. In particular, she insisted that so-called gender-neutral toilets are no longer an option.
The decision by two judges to refuse to allow the trans charity Mermaids to proceed with a bid to strip LGB Alliance of its charitable status is nothing short of a victory for gay and lesbian rights.
This morning’s* news that the LGB Alliance has won its case to retain its charitable status is a victory and a relief for everyone who wants to live in a free and progressive society. That status was challenged by Mermaids and Jolyon Maugham’s so-called Good Law Project. Their argument seemed to be that it was not acceptable for gay and lesbian people to set up a charity to promote gay and lesbian rights. If LGB Alliance had lost, we might as well have returned to the 1950s when same-sex attraction was practically unspeakable.
Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’
Kemi Badenoch is considering a change to the Equality Act 2010 that would restore the meaning of sex to what everybody once understood. I am a science teacher, so I know this. There are two sexes: male and female. Females produces large gametes called eggs while males produce small motile gametes called sperm. Science doesn’t care whether it happens in frogs, monkeys or people – sexual reproduction is a robust process that has been around for millions of years.
Debbie Hayton 