Someone once raised questions that drew PoO’s attention to trans extremists being illogical.
If you can change your sex then why not change your race or species? Why is one possible, but not the others?
Illogical or not, the extremists have been given fresh cause to pursue their claims to special rights after the Government rejected the recommendations from the independent Law Commission to reform how human rights protections apply to transgender and intersex people.
The commission produced a 450-page report, Ia Tangata: Protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics, after a request from the Minister of Justice under the last Labour government.
The request sought advice on whether the Human Rights Act, which protects against discrimination on the basis of sex but does not mention gender identity or intersex people, needed to be updated.
It looks like there will be no updating any time soon.
Newsroom reports:
In a paper tabled in Parliament on Monday, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith acknowledged the commission’s report of last year but said the issue was not a priority for the Government at this stage.
But why should there be a more urgent updating?
The case is not clear. At least, not from the Newsroom explanation:
Successive governments and the Human Rights Commission have held that the protections against sex-based discrimination also bar discrimination on the basis of gender identity or variations of sex characteristics. However, this has never been tested in court.
Maybe PoO has grasped this incorrectly, but it seems the concern is that the courts might rule that statutory protections against sex-based discrimination do not extend to discrimination on the basis of gender identity or variations of sex characteristics.
The Law Commission said:
“We do not consider that the state of the law on this issue is satisfactory. In the absence of any case law on the point, it remains unclear whether protection from discrimination is available to people in these groups and, if so, what the scope of that protection might be.”
It recommended clarifying the protections that apply to transgender and intersex people by adding “gender identity or its equivalents in the cultures of the person” and “having an innate variation of sex characteristics” as protected grounds in the Human Rights Act.
The practical effect of these changes would have been to confirm that these groups have protection from discrimination in housing, hiring and access to goods and services.
But whoa. In those situations, how much unfairness would persist without changes to the law?
If men and women have the same protections against discrimination in housing, hiring and access to goods and services, then the logic which PoO applies says we all have the same rights to them because we all were born as either one or the other.
Unfairness does come into considerations in situations where transgender women are allowed an unfair physical advantage when competing against cis women in some sports.
In other situations, the rights of cis women collide with the rights of transgender women – for example, in allowing transgender women access to single-sex public facilities, like toilets and changing rooms. Or women’s prisons.
By putting the report in the “do nothing for now” basket, the government risks being accused of unfairness – but only by a noisy few.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
The commission produced a 450-page report, Ia Tangata: Protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics, after a request from the Minister of Justice under the last Labour government.
The request sought advice on whether the Human Rights Act, which protects against discrimination on the basis of sex but does not mention gender identity or intersex people, needed to be updated.
It looks like there will be no updating any time soon.
Newsroom reports:
In a paper tabled in Parliament on Monday, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith acknowledged the commission’s report of last year but said the issue was not a priority for the Government at this stage.
But why should there be a more urgent updating?
The case is not clear. At least, not from the Newsroom explanation:
Successive governments and the Human Rights Commission have held that the protections against sex-based discrimination also bar discrimination on the basis of gender identity or variations of sex characteristics. However, this has never been tested in court.
Maybe PoO has grasped this incorrectly, but it seems the concern is that the courts might rule that statutory protections against sex-based discrimination do not extend to discrimination on the basis of gender identity or variations of sex characteristics.
The Law Commission said:
“We do not consider that the state of the law on this issue is satisfactory. In the absence of any case law on the point, it remains unclear whether protection from discrimination is available to people in these groups and, if so, what the scope of that protection might be.”
It recommended clarifying the protections that apply to transgender and intersex people by adding “gender identity or its equivalents in the cultures of the person” and “having an innate variation of sex characteristics” as protected grounds in the Human Rights Act.
The practical effect of these changes would have been to confirm that these groups have protection from discrimination in housing, hiring and access to goods and services.
But whoa. In those situations, how much unfairness would persist without changes to the law?
If men and women have the same protections against discrimination in housing, hiring and access to goods and services, then the logic which PoO applies says we all have the same rights to them because we all were born as either one or the other.
Unfairness does come into considerations in situations where transgender women are allowed an unfair physical advantage when competing against cis women in some sports.
In other situations, the rights of cis women collide with the rights of transgender women – for example, in allowing transgender women access to single-sex public facilities, like toilets and changing rooms. Or women’s prisons.
By putting the report in the “do nothing for now” basket, the government risks being accused of unfairness – but only by a noisy few.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
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