What do you think should happen to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA)?

Sure.

The Good Friday Agreement requires that the ECHR rights, and access to the European Court of Human Rights for individuals, be protected in Northern Ireland.

So the GFA requires that the UK remain a party to the ECHR.

The ECHR requires that there be a process to change sex markers on official documents.

So repealing the GRA is not possible without leaving the ECHR. And leaving the ECHR is not compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.

Ok, I know I’m being thicker than a whale omelette here, but what has a recognition that some men want to legally be women (that is not taken up by the vast amount who id that way) got to do with the Good Friday Agreement?

I don’t understand how they are linked so can someone explain as if it’s a BBC Bitesize piece?

It’s part of the “running interference” strand of the campaign.

Like the leak of lawyer’s comments on an earlier draft of the schools guidance, and the BBC articles.

It’s also part of the “ad hominem” attacks strand of the campaign, where they claim that all women who object to a middle aged male’s presence in the changing rooms alongside their 12 yo niece after swimming are all brexiters, right wing etc.

I think this needs clarification either way.

What are pp reacting to precisely

You know there is twenty years worth of ECHR jurisprudence that followed the Gender Recognition Act, right?

I suppose it’s easy to be upbeat when you don’t understand:

• how case law and precedent works;
• the difference between the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010;
• the complexities of the Good Friday Agreement.

“the replacement would need to include a process to change sex markers on official documents.”

Sex markers? Or acquired gender?

This is what David Lammy MP said to Parliament in 2003.

“The European Court of Human Rights interpreted the convention, which is now a part of UK law, in the case of Goodwin v. UK, and its judgment stated that a system for recognising transsexual people in their acquired gender must exist and that transsexual people must be granted their rights under article 8, the right to respect for private life, and article 12, the right to marry.”

Did David Lammy mislead Parliament at second reading of the bill when he said “acquired gender”? Should he have said official legal record of their biological sex?

That’s not what the Court has said over a number of cases over decades.

Is anybody else feeling quite upbeat thanks to this nonsense from @PlanetJanette?

I can't help but feel that suggesting that women saying no to men will mean the end of peace in Northern Ireland is real death throes stuff.

I can smell the desperation from over here in continental Europe.

No. Every person suggesting withdrawing from the ECHR is doing so.

Understanding case law is just as strong are understanding statute I see.

Case law developed by dozens of jurists over decades does not get discarded or undone like that in a system based on precedent.

The only person suggesting scrapping the GFA is you.

Nah. Optional gender category instead. Lying, and forcing other people to pretend to believe you, isn't a human right. It has actually got fuck all to do with the ECHR.

Well this changes things

Fine. By all means set out why repealing the Gender Recognition Act is worth scrapping the Good Friday Agreement for.

I mean specifically. Once the GRA is repealed what specific changes will women notice in their day to day lives?

Because I can tell you what differences the women of Northern Ireland will notice when the agreement that ended the Troubles is dead.

Everybody will note that @PlanetJanette has not at any point suggested that men with gender identities might want to wind their necks in a bit and accept that not everything has to be for or about them, otherwise they are at risk of compromising peace in Northern Ireland.

So wims rage posting = end of GFA?

OK......

WHY. NOT?

All the stuff about gender that is apparently in the ECHR was imagined into it by reading between the lines. It is not actually written anywhere.

It can be imagined out just as easily as it was imagined in, simply by remembering that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE TOO.

Your assertion is untrue.

The GRA could be repealed and replaced without leaving the ECHR.

Peace in Northern Ireland.... theorised as being paid for by a few thousand people with penises destroying the rights of half the population. All the losers women, all the winners men. Binary. Sex based.

I'm summarizing this conversation for my MP, the poor man could do with a good laugh.

Yes it could be repealed and replaced but the replacement would need to include a process to change sex markers on official documents.

a few thousand people can’t change their birth certificate

I wouldn’t phrase it this way, it undermines the impact on women and children.

The GRA was likely started with that aim but those who are interested in women’s sex based rights are aware of how much more it has become.

It's highly dishonest of you to be pushing this entirely false narrative that we have to choose between peace in Northern Ireland and women's rights.

Of course that isn't necessary.

We change the Equality Act, as explained above, to ensure that the rights of women, particularly minority women, are properly protected.

If people with gender identities want to go to the ECHR about that, they can bring it as far as I'm concerned. A big, high profile court case where they actually need to say the quiet part out loud, about how men with gender identities trump women's rights to safety and dignity, would be very welcome from my point of view. Either the court will be forced to recognise that trans people's right to swing their fists ends where everyone else's noses begin, or they will ignite a global discussion about whether the ECHR is actually fit for purpose.

If we eventually get to the point where the UK concedes that it cannot remain a party to the ECHR whilst also protecting women's rights, then it withdraws and negotiates a revised treaty with Ireland where the UK agrees to sign up to exactly the same legal obligations as before.

Nobody dies.

Except that none of them would change the fact that the GRA cannot be repealed or hollowed out within the ECHR.

“Of course people can advocate to leave the ECHR. That is the only realistic way the UK can lawfully repeal the GRA.”

Not true. The GRA could be repealed and replaced with something else that protects the right to marry and the right for respect of private life for persons who believe themselves to be living as a member of the opposite sex.

Repeal and replace would not involve disapplying the ECHR.

Repeal and replace is far more realistic as a solution than leaving the ECHR in order to repeal without replacement.