Trans man Freddy McConnell's challenge to be named as father on birth certificate deemed inadmissible by the ECHR

[ItsCoolForCats]

https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/news/challenge-to-registration-of-transgender-man-as-mother-declared-inadmissible/

Birth certs should clearly record bio parents (when known) and have capacity for others taking on official parental roles too. But nobody should be recorded as bio parent if they aren't.

Once again this is being presented as an entirely emotively based process - while disregarding the very practical issues birth certs and records need to address.

Society cannot be run according to feelings and vibes alone.

Yes this is a HUGE win for our side. Not appreciated enough so far.

Hats off to Freddy then. 🥳😂

We should have a TERF Island Ally award to give her. 🏆

Like many of the wins it takes a while to settle in. 😊

I am curious to see how this will all play out in countries in the EU.

Yes, I’m a bit puzzled by this birth certificate thing, especially in days of increased terrorism and the need to trace offenders across countries, sometimes.

Birth certificates seem to be regarded as some sort of award or subjective accolade. They’re a necessity, surely , for keeping track of citizenship, benefit entitlements, authentication of who someone is in respective their own marriages and that are their children, verification for airline travel and so on. I’d be interested to know what genealogists think of all this.

I noticed that someone on the Reddit link that was provided said that they were adopted and couldn’t get their original birth certificate, which is simply not true.

Dear Freddy’s child. Thank you to you and your advocate who confirmed women who give birth are and only ever can be mothers.

A mother is a powerful thing and I’m glad you have one (even if her wishes don’t always align with yours).

Erasure of mothers from the lexicon esp in maternity services serves to degrade women further. Thank you for holding that line.

I don't think switching to parent A and parent B is going to cut the mustard for the trans loons. It would be like making all toilets unisex. It doesn't give them the validation they demand.

🤮 I thought it’d be amusing but left after I came across “birthing parent”

It's medical issues that I tend to think of - heritable conditions etc.

I think its another confusion stemming at base from fear of or inability to acknowledge the human condition as mortal beings.

Attempts to reverse engineer reality. Fiddle with words and you can override the things the words were invented to refer to.

The suggestion is that because something is emotionally significant, we should allow emotional reasoning to be used to inform or decide it.

Sometimes things are emotionally significant precisely because they are not decided or affected by emotion.

It’s worth listening to the first couple of Michael’s Oxford lectures which are on his Substack. The two which happened before he cancelled/rescheduled. He talks in great detail about how the ECHR interacts with state law. I had to listen twice and probably can’t explain it to anyone else! But it was very clear - that court is never going to agree a case based on TWAW which diminishes Womens rights. The TRAs are clearly living on the past glories of Goodwin and have extrapolated this out to the made up Stonewall law stuff which will collapse in court… The sooner we get a case there to confirm this - the better!

That’s so well put.

I’m gutted for her babies - even though she’s lost the legal case I’m sure she won’t let them call her ‘mum’.

To quite literally deprive a child if anyone to call a mother is othering and cruel. Those poor kids among their peer group with other kids mentioning their mums - hers have no part in the conversation.

Even kids who’s mums have died have a person who was mum.

And I’ve brought it straight back to the emotional effect but without the foundational facts we lose so much.

I'm guessing new issued birth certificate for adopted children was for the childs benefit, not the adoptive parents. Life is tough enough for them without having to explain why they have different name and parents to their bc.

In that respect, it must be hard for abandoned at birth children who will not know who their mother is. Having a birth certificate with mother unknown must be difficult.

Thats what's is cruel about this case. Having only father listed could cause the child lots of problems in the future. It doesn't make sense.

I think you’ve touched on the core of this question: a birth certificate is for the benefit of the child, not the parents. The arguments about whether adoptive parents appear on a birth certificate or not are (and should be) centred on what’s in the child’s best interests.There’s a case to say that it should always indicate biological parentage, and there’s a case to say it should indicate the adoptive parents to avoid stigmatizing the child, as you say. But the decision rests on what’s best for the child.

This case was argued from the point of view of the parent’s rights, which are very much subsidiary, and it’s not really surprising it was lost.

It'd be frustrating to be an 80 year old explaining that the reason your father is known, but your mother isnt is because of 2018 queer theory.

Well yes, some PP linked jurists did complain yes. But it has been in place now for 20 years so...

Well you could go the the Herculean effort of copying and pasting Article 4 into a translation tool, clearly Spanish legal communications aren't written in English so I sent you the most valid source of information.

And yes. Same sex parents are listed on birth certificates. In the case of lesbian couples, if they are married they automatically are both listed as parents. In the case that they are not then the mum who did not carry the pregnancy is listed as "progenitor no gestante".

In the case of couples where both partners are male, one must be the biological father and the one who is not biologically related adopts the child and is thus inscribed on the birth certificate. Filiacion is equal regardless of via biology or adoption.

You didn't send an extract; you sent a link to the whole document. I'm honestly not interested enough in how it's done in Spain to do all that.

I mean, I quoted the relevant article.

Anyway. I'm pointing out that other countries have a gender neutral way of listing parents on birth certificates and avoids a lot of these issues. That's all.

Sometimes the way the UK does things is not the most appropriate for modern societal needs. This might be one of those things. Some people feel that this approach is better, some don't. But the idea that "there's no way around it" is clearly false, as more progressive countries have been doing it for quite a long time.

There is nothing 'progressive' about lying on a child's birth certificate and belittling the role of the mother. Those might be developing countries, or they might be misogynistic. But they are certainly not progressive. That is for sure.

Sounds like another “cake and eat it case”. Very reminiscent of Freddie who booked an appointment at the fertility clinic for the insemination of their eggs the very same week as making a legal promise to live as a man in order to be granted a GRC.

It doesn't matter how many other countries have another way of doing it, it doesn't make any of those way's right.
If you render it to nothing more than an admin process, you don't need any more than the date, the time, and the sex of the child.
It's a record of birth of a humanbeing not a delivery note.

Delivered on 28/06/26 at 6.30am one female, delivery number 1234567890. 🤯

Heh. I mean, I totally agree with you on the principle of it, but:

Delivered on 28/06/26 at 6.30am one female, delivery number 1234567890.

I've been doing a bit of genealogy, and that's very much what those birth records are like :P

Act number 1234567890 - Birth of Suzy Smith - "On 28/06/26, John Smith came to the city hall to declare that his wife, Mary Jones, gave birth in their home at 6:30am to a girl, to whom he gave the name of Suzy."

Technically, a birth certification is indeed nothing more than an administrative process - which means it must be as exact and accurate as possible, or it's utterly worthless.

I can assure you that in comparison to the UK, Spain is anything but misogynistic.

The hand wringing over this is unbelievable. Lying? No. Using gender neutral terms isn't lying. "Erasing the mother" ? No - listing the mother using a gender neutral term. Calling people parents as opposed to mother and father.

But of course the UK has convinced it's people that they are The Best At Everything so it's a waste of time trying to discuss anything where we suggest that other countries might be doing something in a way you guys could learn from.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

"developing countries" like Australia, Malta, Spain some parts of France?!?

None of those countries are "developing countries"