Editorial

by Katherine Cummings

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

When variant forms of law exist in a country, or other legislative unit, it is inevitable that where these laws are incompatible one or the other must take precedence.

This fairly obvious statement has been brought about by the Anglican Church, once more rearing its ugly old head in Britain.

The Most Reverend [sic] Peter Smith, Archbishop of Cardiff is seeking to take on the British Government which has dared to use new equality legislation to force the Church to allow transsexuals to occupy positions within the Church.

Ignoring the fact that the new laws do not mandate that any specific individual would be entitled to ordination, or to become a nun, but merely prohibit any form of "indirect discrimination" against those who are post-operative transgenders, the Church is seeking exemptions from the law, demanding access to the original records of all who apply for ordination or entry to an order of nuns.

Archbishop Smith (surely they could have found a Jones to fill the see of Cardiff?) has been quoted by the Times as saying "Many Christians believe, on strongly held religious grounds, that gender is given before birth and cannot be changed."

Leaving aside my own viewpoint, which is that all religions are equally foolish and that anyone who wants to become an official member of the bureaucracy of a religion is equally deluded, I still (like Voltaire) feel the need to defend the rights of all people to be seen as equal under the law, whether that law is Common Law or Ecclesiastical Law.

If a person has been reassigned from one gender to the other he or she should have every right conferred on her or his affirmed gender, without exception.

To rule otherwise is to create classes and sub-classes of citizens who are treated differently and whose differing treatment can be enforced by law. There is enough class consciousness in Britain already, based on lineage and wealth, without building in further layers of snobbery and discrimination based on gender-role history. Enough is enough.

It is a simple fact that transgender is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible and to suggest that it is perpetuates the discredited view that transgender is in some way linked to sex and in some way to homosexuality.

The only exception I can point out to my earlier statement that where two sets of laws exist in the same country one must give way to the other is the notion of traditional law enclaves, where a different set of laws can prevail, according to earlier, or different, principles. We have seen such laws operate in Australia and in the United States, where indigenous people are allowed a measure of autonomy within demarcated areas. If the Anglican Church is prepared to live in some segregated part of Britain (the Isle of Wight, maybe, or perhaps, since they don't like to recognise women as equals, the Isle of Man) then maybe they can have their regressive laws and customs. Otherwise, they should not.

To take a rest from my hobby horse for a moment, I would like to share some very positive experiences with you from my recent excursions outside the cloistered walls of the Gender Centre. One of my duties is to talk to outside organisations or groups and recently I seem to have done little else. I talked to a Biology Group at Macquarie University (an annual gig), spent an evening with a post-graduate medical ethics seminar at the University of Sydney, participated in an all-day conference on social diversity at the Macarthur TAFE, talked to an assembly of around 200 TAFE students at the Nirimba Educational Precinct located between Blacktown and Richmond and two weeks ago spent several hours as a "living book" in Martin Place for the Mental Health Association. The living library idea was new to me. The idea apparently originated in Denmark and it's a bit like speed dating. A number of people are gathered together who want to pass on information and they can then, like library books, be "borrowed". People choose someone to talk to and then they have fifteen minutes to ask questions or make statements. Our "books" included an ageing man living with AIDS, a bipolar woman, a woman caring for a husband with M.S. and a son with bipolar, a lesbian clergywoman, a woman who asserts that she is of no gender whatsoever, a Chinese woman who wanted to talk about life in Australia, a married couple from P-FLAG who have a gay son and a lesbian daughter and, of course, yours truly, a transgender woman. All very inter-est-ing, as Henry Gibson used to say, peering out from under his Wehrmacht helmet like a disillusioned tortoise. Or was it Henrik Ibsen?

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.