From Sex Matters
Sex Matters is asking people in the UK to sign our official petition calling on the government to update the Equality Act 2010 to make clear that the protected characteristic of “sex” means biological sex, and is not modified by the holding of a gender recognition certificate.
When the Gender Recognition Act was brought in, lawmakers recognised that it was an extraordinary piece of legislation, and that the implications of section 9, which changes a person’s legally recognised sex “for all purposes”, were unclear:
“I have never seen a statute quite in this form before. The Bill says ‘becomes for all purposes’, and it is not limited to the purposes of the Act. I do not understand what all the purposes are if they are other than the purposes of the Act.”
Lord Cambell of Alloway, House of Lords 2004
They put in a safety clause (section 23) to give governments the power to sort out any problems later. As the notes to the legislation explain:
“This power…is provided due to the entirely novel nature of this legislation. Legislation has made distinctions on the basis of gender [sex] for centuries, and the use of gender-specific terms, though it has reduced, nevertheless continues in some contexts.”
Gender Recognition Act, explanatory notes Laws should be understandable by everyone, and this year the government recognised the need for new laws to be clear about the meaning of “sex”:
“The effect of section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is that a reference to a ‘woman’ in legislation, without more, will include someone who is a woman by virtue of a Certificate and will not include someone who is a man by virtue of a Certificate. In some cases, this might be the desired result but in others it might not.”
*Statement by Lord True and Mark Spencer MP^
According to a report in the Telegraph, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also intends to “look to review the Equality Act to make it clear that sex means biological sex rather than gender”.
We are calling on the government to do this by using the power written into the GRA to modify the operation of the Equality Act 2010 to put it beyond doubt that the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “man” and “woman”, for the purpose of sex discrimination laws, mean biological sex and not “sex as modified by a Gender Recognition Certificate”.
To sign and share the petition to update the Equality Act to make clear that the protected characteristic of “sex” means biological sex:
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petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243