Secretary of State for Scotland looking at using Westminster powers to overule gender recognition bill

[fromorbit]

Alister Jack has said he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
twitter.com/JournoStephen

Detailed Review of the Legal case that powers that could be used:
ukconstitutionallaw.org/2022/12/21/michael-foran-sex-gender-and-the-scotland-act/

In short it seems there are potential good grounds to use Section 35 in this case due to contradictions in the legislation. [Lots of speculation that this was this Sturgeon's aim all along create legislation so bad it would be overturned and increase support for Indy? However I think this is just a case of pure ideology combined with incompetence.]

Writing into your MP especially if they are a Tory would be a good move at this point.

Look at it this way.

Independence is a long term thing and will keep on coming back.

Your rights, once gone, won't. The women raped in prisons can't be unraped. The women excluded from facilities, services, who stayed in dangerous relationships because they couldn't use the mixed sex refuge and the brainwashing prescribed as the price of entry? The harm to them can't be undone either.

Alex Massie
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scotlands-gender-bill-is-a-worry-for-labour-899wvxd8d

Absolutely! Do it now whilst you’re angry and before female socialisation kicks in tomorrow. DM a group on Twitter, DM a group on FB. It’s not that scary. Someone will probably want to meet you for a cuppa (or pint) to make sure you are not a bad actor and then all of a sudden you will have a new network of rational, reality based friends. I’ve just been on an Xmas jaunt with our lot and we met up with another group, it’s really good for mental health during these crazy times. And you don’t have to be part of direct action - you can help in the background.

Thanks to all who are responding to the above. Your points make complete sense.

I'm already on WRN's mailing list, but will now actively seek to join. I've also hugely admired the work Sarah Phillimore has done in taking on this monster - think it was WPUK she was involved with - I'll contact them too.

I can do without being outed in my profession, but quite frankly I've reached a point where I'm beyond this. I'm professional enough to keep personal opinions out of my workplace - unlike the vocal 'allies' - but I have a right to hold this view, and the right to join any organization outside of work I want to join.

Sick and tired of being held to ransom by this aggressive movement.

I’m not for independence but I can see WM intervening as pushing it along.

But I stand with women on this issue. Yet I don’t want it to be something that furthers the break up of the UK

Anyway it’s out of my hands. Hopefully both things will work out or neither which would be awful

order-order.com/2022/12/22/westminster-government-could-block-scottish-trans-bill/

"A source close to Kemi Badenoch – the Equalities secretary who has been incredibly scathing of the legislation – also tells Guido:
“Kemi’s overriding concern is the safety of women and girls. The SNP have pushed this Bill through without any thought to its wider implications.""

@SirChenjins I couldn't see a response in the thread, so here goes :)

Section 28 and the very real persecution of gay people in the 80s related to sexual orientation and the right of same sex couples to be together and be recognised as having a right to love or fancy who they loved or fancied. It had zero impact on non gay people.

Transgender rights are not the same because the argument is not about sexuality in the way the gay rights argument was. It is fundamentally about the common understanding of how we categorise men and women which affects everybody.

Unless, of course, it IS a sexuality - in which case it is problematic for women who don't want to be used as props in someone's fetish.

If it is not about sexuality it is not the same. If it is it is a problem for women.

I have said this on another thead, but feel I have to repeat it here.

The vote today has not changed the basis on which single sex exemptions are applied as this is under the EA.

Our problem remains the same as it was before the vote. Too few people including women's groups value or want to bother with women only provision.

Rather than getting the issue bogged down into a political party fight between Tories and SNP we should be actively campaigning for and getting more spaces to operate under the existing rights provided by the EA.

ie why aren't health services and prisons using the single sex exemption?

Why did Girl Guides give up on this?

This isn't about politicians imposing something out of the ordinary on the population. As we have seen whether shops or theatres, nobody respects women and nobody respects women's right to same sex provision. The option to do this exists under the law even after today's vote but people dont care.

And it isn't just that Stonewall etc., have brainwashed the media etc., but when asked most people wouldn't have thought about it.

We need to campaign to make sure that the option under the EA for single sex provision is expanded. Its not about changing the wording. It is about making peope care enough about women to implement it.

I work for an MP.

on what to write to an MP- by all means have a look at any template letters that are written.

and then- rewrite in your own words. Make it personal. Explain why it’s important to YOU.

if you copy and paste a standard letter some MPs will not answer you (they get hundreds of emails a day, so C&P emails may be ignored)

you’ll need to give your name and address to get an answer- that’s to ensure they know you are a constituent.

ask them to refer your letter to the Secretary of State (Con MP) or shadow Sos (Labour). Could ask to refer to Scotland Sec, or women & equalities, or both.

Some MPs may never see your email, as it could be opened by a woke staffer who doesn’t like what you have written. (Sadly)

But more and more are willing to put their heads above the parapet. And other than the SNP, not a lot of WM MPs are fans of Nicola Sturgeon.

and- pls be patient. MPs get a lot of corespondents, and have to prioritise urgent stuff (evictions/visas etc) so policy stuff like this can take longer. If you haven’t heard anything after 2/3 weeks, do follow up. But if you’re rude and abusive you won’t get an answer…

and you can ask for a surgery- to meet them to chat. If you do, expect to be asked what you want help with- that’s becuase many issues can be worked on (and solved) by staff. Staff might try to put you off. But you can keep asking- say you want the chance to discuss it in detail. Might be a phone surgery rather than face to face.

but pls do write. It’s important that they all realise how important this is.

Writing to our Conservative MP, I think that we will be pointing out to him that the 2 rubbish pieces of legislation (GRA 2004, & Equality Act 2010) are both LABOUR party legislation!! Ie passed into law by a Labour gvmt.

The Conservatives should stand by their Conservative values & repeal/revise these poorly considered pieces of legislation.

Tinkering round the edges will not put them right.

Tony Blair's rubbish law (the GRA) needs to be repealed.

@SirChenjins as well as homosexuality having been illegal, when it was legal gay people did not have the same rights that straight people having (eg marriage, age of consent, to adopt.)
Trans people have the same rights as everyone else and are covered by the same discrimination laws. They can marry, adopt etc.

As a PP indicated, when gay people were given the same rights as straight people it did not impact on or take anything away from them. It was not detrimental to others snd did not impact on the quality of other people's lives.
The same can not be said for giving trans identified men the same rights and provisions as women.

There is also the difference that gay people were an oppressed minority and parity was right. Men are not an oppressed group but women are. So giving men women's rights is all the more egregious and does not offer parity.

I think it's JCJ says in the AHF film, there's never been a civil rights movement before where what one minority group is seeking would diminish the rights of another.

She goes further than that, she says it’s the oppressor group demanding the rights of the oppressed group.

Quite right BlackForest, so she did. She's right too. Whereas gay people and women would both be considered oppressed groups.

I’d like to know how Labour came to adopt their position. There have been clear grumblings from some of their MSPs. Was their position influenced by Keir Starmer to enable Scotland to be Guinea pigs before the next election so he can see how it all works (or doesn’t) out? Or am I giving him too much credit for strategic thinking and actually Scottish Labour are just ideological as well?

Given that the GRA was their baby, and it's devolved, I'd like to know this too.

The awareness of this has been raised massively over the past few weeks . People I know who have never mentioned this before have been talking about it and no one I know supports it. Even my DCs, who are the right age to be completely in thrall, mainly think it’s a subject to be avoided. The trans kids they know from school are all transboys and female non-binary (far more of the latter than the former). However, I can see the penny dropping as this begins to overlap with their own views based on their own “lived experience”. I asked DC1 if the NUS president was right to say it should be extended to under 16s - “definitely not” was the reply.

I think a good number of MSPs will have voted this through with their fingers tightly crossed that Westminster steps in. I don’t know how they think this is going to play out - do they really think that in situations where women and girls feel they have been disadvantaged then everyone will just say “Ok then”. When there is more awareness and more people complaining then many MSPs are going to be viewed as a cohort who simply aren’t able to represent the average voter.

UK government could veto self-ID trans law

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6607be5c-8210-11ed-ab78-11b70ed96428?shareToken=f0d255f2a9e2ac9613a80d0ab2e7a997

(By Michael Foran)

I'm going to take my life in both hands and have a go.

There was no contradiction between gay rights and "straight" rights - the simple fact was that gays were denied rights. But "gay" and "straight" were categories that both sides agreed on. It was not an argument between "straight" people and "gay" people. It was based in one side saying that gays had no moral right to equal rights, and the other side saying yes they did. There was no conceptual confusion, just prejudice and ignorance.

This is not the case with the current row. You have one side claiming that the distinction between groups is based around identity -"trans" and "cis" - on the one hand and the other claiming that it's between "male" and "female" on the other. There is a conceptual confusion which has been made worse by sloppily worded laws, a deliberate attempt to confuse the matter through Queer theory, a misapplication of intersectionality and above all by a refusal to discuss differences and look for agreement (the "no debate" stance). So we have arrived at a place where two completely different conceptions of sex are being used - "biological sex" and "legal sex", which is conflated with "gender", with no one trying to sort out what it all means, except for a few brave women.

And interestingly, for the first time ever, due to this confusion, the definitions of "gay" and "straight" are suddenly being redesigned. They no longer have their old meanings in everyone's eyes.

I've been hanging around this board for over two years now, and I have never seen anyone claim that Trans people shouldn't have rights. They argue instead that women have rights, including the right to define themselves as women based in human reproductive assymetry, not identity.

This is a work in progress. Be kind.....

I don't see it as a "clash of rights". It's demands to remove rights. "Clash of rights" like "both sides", wrongly equates women who've played by the rules with males who are intent on pushing us back 100+ years.

No, I will never use these terms.

I sent this:
'I am writing to you as my UK MP to express my desire for the UK
Government to intervene in the recent legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament on gender self-id. It is surely 'ultra vires'.
Women and children in Scotland are British citizens and as such deserve the same protection as citizens in the rest of the UK. It makes no sense for the Law on this to differ in different parts of our small island.
You should be aware of the issues by now but if not I refer you to Sex Matters.

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/the-question-for-the-next-four-weeks/?mc_cid=7bcf0444d9&mc_eid=8ae636995a

The SNP seem unconcerned that the general public are 3/4 against as well. Oh well you can't ignore the votes of 50% of the population forever (women) so 75% is an even more dangerous number to ignore.

Trust me when I say standing up for child safeguarding and women's sex-based rights is a vote winner for the Conservative Party across the UK.

All the other parties (Labour, LibDem, SNP) have 99% fallen for the cult of 'gender identity ideology' which has zero basis in scientific fact and has nothing to do with sexual orientation (LGB) despite Stonewall et al trying to force-team them with T issues.'

JKR

twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1606024633534259204?s=46&t=WUcA3kE3yiRKgkT-o3UiEQ

""Scotland is henceforth a country in which the sensitivities of some sex offenders now trump those of women." -- ✍️@ alexmassie"

I hope so....I also want UK Government to intervene as why should (Scottish) women have to fund it themselves......again? If politicians hadn't been asleep on the job for the last 15 years, none of this would have happened 'under the radar' as it has done across the western democracies.

I am totally against Independence anyway but this should not be a consideration.
What point is there in staying in the UK, if the UK Government doesn't protect British citizens when a devolved administration overreaches (for whatever reason)?
Scottish voters want the UK Government to restore common sense - look at the polls. There is little political risk to intervening.
The idiots in this are the Labour Party. This would be easy votes for them from former SNP voters, if they properly supported sex-based rights and child protection. They are a lost cause and in Scotland totally spineless.

It won't. See my other post. It needs to be overruled because it is 'ultra vires'.
It should not be up to Scottish women to fight legal cases on this. Women across the UK have had to spend enough of their own money already because of the bad faith actors pushing this 'gender identity ideology' under the radar.