Sarah, The Bringer of Tea

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Anti-transgender protestors held a picket at London Dykemarch on Saturday 21st of June, chanting transphobic slogans in an attempt to drown out my keynote speech.

As I gave my speech, a group of 6 protestors started trying to shout me down, and distributed leaflets amongst the gathered crowd calling me a “lesbian hating man”, claiming that I was part of a “male” takeover of lesbian spaces, and accusing me of appropriating a lesbian identity.

Two of the protestors have since been identified as Dr Julia Long of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, and Dr Lynne Harne, of Bristol University. Both lecture in women’s studies and both are involved in developing equalities policy.

Both academics have previously been involved in the London “RadFem” conferences, which are notorious for their trans exclusionary policies and their linkup of transphobic speakers. The conference lost its venues in 2012 and 2013 due to its transphobic-hate focus, having to find alternate venues at the last minute.

This is the latest incident in a campaign of transphobic harassment of me, coordinated via social media, which has been going on for several months, ever since I declined to engage in a panel discussion with journalist Julie Bindel, also noted for transphobic writing in the past.

Since then, a series of coordinated complaints about me were sent to the Liberal Democrat Party and Cambridge City Council, each of which was investigated and found to be invalid. I have had my blog targeted for a denial of service attack and my email hacked, and have received anonymous hate mail accusing me of abusing my position as a councillor to obtain a “sex change operation” – a charge which would require me to invent a time machine for it to be true.

My family was targeted, with harassers claiming that my wife left me because I “could no longer satisfy her sexually” after “mutilating” myself (my wife and I are together and very happy). The abusers wrote blogs calling me a “privilege denying t****y”, and described my vagina as a “f**khole”.

More recently, one of the harassers made their intentions clear, saying that, “Sarah Brown should gracefully bow out of public life”. It seems that any trans person who has any kind of public profile is considered “fair game” by these people.

The stress of the constant harassment, coinciding with my relocation campaign cause me to seek medical help for acute anxiety and depression. I spent around 3 months on antidepressants and tranquillisers and much of that period is still a black hole in my memory. After losing my seat, and while coming off the antidepressants, I finally snapped back at one of the people who had claimed responsibility for involvement in the harassment campaign, in response to constant provocation.

I regret saying that, but it was done after months of provocation, the destruction of my mental health and the targeting of my family. This was used as “proof” that I am a “violent male”, and the justification for picketing the London Dyke March.

I am not the only transgender woman to suffer this kind of abuse. I am deeply concerned that any transgender woman who dares to have any kind of participation in public life is subject to this kind of relentless hounding, I am deeply concerned that prominent academics, involved in researching and developing equalities positions and in a position of responsibility over students, some of whom may be trans themselves, see fit to picket a Lesbian Pride march, chant transphobic slogans and hand out transphobic material.

This abuse is performed in the name of “feminism”, and many mainstream media feminists either turn a blind eye, or actively endorse these activities. Enough is enough – this persistent abuse of transgender women by a vocal minority of transphobic radical feminists, pushing discredited transphobic ideology from the 1970s should not, and must not be tolerated.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

For some reason, this popped into my head.

She who would Valium take ‘gainst all disaster,
Let her, for sanity’s sake, get to sleep faster.
There’s no discouragement shall make her once relent
Her first avowed intent to take the benzos.

Who so beset her round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound – repeat prescription’s sorted.
And with the SSRIs, though she with gaslighter vies,
She will make good her right to take the benzos.

Block button dost defend her, and raise her spirit.
We know she, at the end, will triumph o’er git.
Then worries flee away! She’ll fear not what TERFs say,
She smiles and at last says, “I’m off the benzos!”

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

This is a piece I wrote for Pink News, but I’m also publishing it here:

The relationship between Stonewall and the trans community has never been straightforward, to say the least.

Stonewall in England is, and has been, ostensibly an LGB group, campaigning for those involved in same sex relationships, and has taken the position that they are allied with trans campaign groups, but do not involve themselves in trans issues directly.

On paper you can draw nice neat lines separating “gender identity stuff” and “sexuality stuff”, and have everything work out. Sadly, reality is messier and doesn’t much care for attempts to confine things to neat boxes.

Perhaps this was most obviously seen in 2008, when what was reckoned at the time to be the UK’s largest public protest by transgender people and our allies took place; outside the swanky Stonewall Awards ceremony in London. Trans people were hurt and outraged that journalist Julie Bindel, who many trans people saw as openly transphobic, was nominated as a champion of diversity. I was there, waving a banner and shouting, and the crowd was angry over what it saw as Stonewall promoting its own interests by hurting our vulnerable community.

A similar problem arose more recently, over the same sex marriage bill. It’s fair to say Stonewall were caught napping a bit when, in autumn 2010, the Liberal Democrats announced our commitment to delivering marriage equality. As momentum built, Stonewall joined enthusiastically and published a draft “same sex marriage bill”. It was, as I recall, less than two pages long and didn’t mention trans people once.

Trans people were treated terribly unjustly by marriage law for a long time, and if ever there was an opportunity to right wrongs, it was with this bill. Since the 70s, our marriages were in legal limbo until 2004, when the then government, finally forced to act by the European Court of Human Rights, grudgingly agreed to recognise our true genders (and thus allow us to be protected at work from sex discrimination and a whole host of other stuff), but at a cost; the government wanted to take our existing marriages away, to erase them from history.

When the actual act came forth, not only did the government not want to right historical wrongs; they also wanted to make a new one, the Spousal Veto. If you wanted your employment non-discrimination rights, and other stuff that came with recognition, you (literally) need a letter from your husband, wife or civil partner saying they consent. If they don’t (and it doesn’t matter if they’re estranged and hate you, or in a coma after an accident and unable to consent), the only way you can end your legal non-personhood is to divorce them.

About a dozen-or-so trans lobbyists, of which I was one, met with civil servants, lobbied parliamentarians, and offered amendments and compromises to try and get our confiscated marriages back, to remove or at least time-limit the veto. Despite parliamentarians like Julian Huppert and Liz Barker passionately taking up our cause in the Commons and Lords respectively, the civil service and government didn’t budge.

The Marriage (same sex couples) Act passed into law with a spousal veto, and with no restitution of the marriages confiscated.

Things could have been so different if our little group of people who didn’t really know what we were doing had a big organisation like Stonewall behind us. In Scotland, after work by the excellent Scottish Transgender Alliance and the Equality Network, and where Stonewall does support trans people, the Scottish Parliament voted unanimously to remove the spousal veto. In England and Wales, we’re stuck with it. At a time when trans people really, really needed the help of a professional LGBT lobbying organisation, Stonewall decided it was nothing to do with them and looked away.

Every time I talked to formed CEO Ben Summerskill about this, he said it went back to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, when trans groups wanted to do things by ourselves. I can’t help wounding if there were personality politics involved at the time, if bridges were burned. Perhaps that’s why we’re left in the cold. Times change, a new generation of trans activists is around today and we feel like we’re being constrained by deals, and perhaps arguments, that happened behind closed doors ten years ago by people who haven’t been able to move on.

My plea to Stonewall, and to interim CEO Ruth Hunt, is to use this opportunity to sweep away old understandings and misunderstandings, and to see if we can’t build something more inclusive, where trans people can turn to the largest LGBT rights organisation in the country (because that’s what everybody else sees them as, regardless of whether they see themselves that way), ask for help, and get it.

We don’t promise to be uncritical, and not say anything when you get it wrong, but wouldn’t it be great if Stonewall at least tried to be on the same side as trans people, rather than leaving us to fight the same battles, against the same people who hate us for the same reasons, alone?

Editor’s note: This piece originally created the impression that Stonewall Scotland was responsible for the removal of the spousal veto and discounted the hard work of the Equality Network and the Scottish Transgender Alliance. This was a drafting mistake on my part, and I offer my unreserved apologies to both.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Pushed by Baroness Benjamin (she of Playschool fame), the Liberal Democrat 2013 Conference debated a motion to require censorship of the Internet by default on all Internet capable devices, with an explicit requirement to opt-out. The filter is supposed to prevent access to porn, but since computers are bad at identifying what is porn, and what is, for example, an LGBT news site, or a breast feeding advocacy site, these things have a tendency to block all sorts of other sites too. They block resource sites, sex education sites, political satire, blogs, equality campaigns and all sorts of things that it is vital to maintain free and open access to.

I put in a card to speak an, for the first time at a federal conference, I was called! Here is what I said:

Conference, I was recently in Plymouth, and being not overly familiar with it, I asked the Siri assistant on my iPhone for driving directions from one side of town to the other.

It tried to send me via Warsaw, in Poland.

Automatic systems behave like this because they don’t know enough to realise when they’re doing something obviously ridiculous. They just do it anyway.

This is the folly of automatic censorship on the Internet. There is so much stuff out there that you can’t possibly do it all by hand; you have to use automated systems and, like my iPhone’s bad driving directions, they get it wrong.

As an equality campaigner I have seen first hand the effects of Internet censorship. I have been frustrated when trying to access LGBT news sites, or reading blogs of people campaigning for quality, sex education, breast feeding, safer working conditions for those involved in sex work, drugs information, and so on.

I have even been disallowed access to my own blog, which, by the way, was shortlisted for a Lib Dem Voice award this year, because, apparently, it contains “adult content”.

Perhaps campaigning for equal rights for vulnerable and abused minorities is “adult content”, but so-called porn filters shouldn’t be blocking it.

While I do not doubt the intentions of those behind this motion, and the amendment, I do doubt the technical literacy they represent, or rather the lack of it. In seeking to “protect children from porn”, automated filters will block political campaigns, satire, support sites for victims of homophobic bullying, sexual abuse, eating disorders, breast feeding campaigners and the blogs of members of this party.

This motion, amended or not, is unfit for purpose. Conference, send it back so that it can be reexamined with the full participation of minority groups and young people, those affected by it. If you don’t send it back, then please vote it down. It’s profoundly illiberal and it will cause real harm to the things we value.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I think I’m noticing a pattern develop in the less than harmonious way social media interfaces with journalism. I’m specifically going to avoid naming names, because I don’t really wish to pour petrol on flames.

However, it seems that there are a whole bunch of people who exist in a space between “random person on the Internet” and “so famous that someone manages their social media presence for them” who have embraced social media, and particularly Twitter, and possibly see it as a way to build their personal “brand”. Often these people are freelance columnists doing bits and pieces for newspapers and magazines. They perhaps see Twitter as a tool which can help them build their career.

And all goes well for a while, and they build a few tens of thousands of followers, and presumably think, “this is great! I get to share my thoughtful thoughts with the world and people will retweet them, and comment on them, and further build my presence!”

And then they say something that’s controversial in a way they weren’t hoping for.

What happens next is becoming a cliché: people object to a thing that’s been said. The author initially engages a bit. It rapidly becomes a self-sustaining blaze. Their phone starts going berserk with mention notifications, and they feel thoroughly got at. Within a few hours, they tend to shut down their twitter account.

The next wave will see their friends who also exist in a similar space, and who are using social media in a similar way, complain that they have been “hounded” off Twitter by “bullies”.

What I have to say next may not be popular, but I think it’s true:

This is your own fault and you need to take responsibility for your actions

Seriously, you engaged with something you didn’t fully understand, which worked well for you for a while, which you discovered can actually be really powerful, but which ultimately is not something you personally control. You were happy to use that power while it was working for you, but because you can’t control it there came a time when it did something else. When it did, it did it with all the power and speed that you previously relished, and which is now making you feel like you’re being buried under an avalanche.

In other words, you played with a powerful tool, the use of which you were not properly trained in, and recklessly concluded that this power was only ever going to work for you.

What would you think of someone who didn’t know how to drive a car getting in one and bombing down the M1, towards London, at 3 in the morning at 100mph? They’d presumably think they were having great fun as they sailed past town and city on a long, straight, empty road at 100mph.

And then these yellow lines appeared in front of them, and they have no idea what that means, and suddenly they’re on the North Circular road, still doing 100mph, with no actual idea how to drive.

That’s not hugely different to someone treating social media as something that will only ever advance their career. Twitter wasn’t built for the sole purpose of making your CV and ego larger and those tens of thousands of followers you were treating as a resource are real people who will just as soon turn on you as retweet your philosophical musings.

You need to deal with that, and not complain that bad things happen when you drive off the end of the M1 at 100mph.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

The government has published its long-awaited proposals for same sex marriage. This is a technical blog post, looking at what the implcations for trans people are:

I have a non-binary identity

The government’s equal marriage consultation set the tone by starting off talking about “marriage regardless of gender”. This was hopeful in that it suggested that trans issues were being given equal consideration to the comparatively more straightforward issue of same sex marriage in a cisnormative situation.

Note however that this bill is called the “Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill”. This seems like a retrograde step. We’re back to talking about “same sex” and “opposite sex” rather than “regardless of gender”. Indeed, it goes on, when talkming about how “marriage” is to be interpreted in existing legislation:

A reference to marriage is to be read as including a reference to marriage of a same sex couple

Same goes for cohabiting people who aren’t married – extension is to be granted to same sex couples.

Furthermore:

(a) “husband” includes a man who is married to another man;
(b) “wife” includes a woman who is married to another woman

This is pretty thin for non-binary people. If you’re neither a man nor a woman, or your marriage can’t be described as either “opposite sex” or “same sex”, then you’re not included in any of this. Where the consultation simply avoided this “opposite sex/same sex/man/woman” distinction entirely with “marriage regardless of gender”, what we now have in the bill is “marriage for the genders of male and female”.

If that’s not you and you want to get married, you’ll likely have to lie about who you are.

I want a civil partnership

Nothing has changed – you and your partner have to be the “same sex”, even if that’s a completely nonsensical way to describe your relationship. If the concept of “same sex” doesn’t mean anything in your relationship, you’ll likely have to lie if you want one of these.

I’m in a civil partnership and I’m transitioning

If you are in one of these and want a Gender Recognition Certificate, you have a few options:

• Convert your civil partnership to a marriage before having anything to do with the Gender Recognition Panel.

Get an Interim Gender Recognition Certificate and annul your civil partnership. This is the same as at present and there are no proposals to end this barbaric practice.

Have your civil partner transition to the same binary gender as you (if one or both of you aren’t binary, lie) and apply for a GRC at the same time. The highly competent and efficient civil servants who administer all this stuff will make sure this works smoothly (warning: sarcasm may apply).

Don’t get a gender recognition certificate. This is what lots of people in this situation (both in civil partnerships and marriages) already do, because they regard their relationship as more important than legal recognition as their proper gender. I wish I hadn’t found out I was one of these people until too late.

If you want to transition into an “opposite sex relationship” in the eyes of the state and retain your civil partnership, you can’t. If you have lots of money you may want to consider speaking to a human rights lawyer at this point.

I’m already married and I want to stay married and I want a Gender Recognition Certificate

Congratulations. You fall into the category of “trans people for whom this is actually useful”. You can have one. Your existing relationship will continue to be recognised. It’s not clear if you can get your name fixed on a reissued marriage certificate the way you can on your birth certificate; the bill doesn’t say.

I was married, I had my marriage annulled, I’m now in a civil partnership, can I have my marriage back?

I’m in this situation. The answer is no, you can’t. It stinks, doesn’t it? The government screwed us over and it’s not really interested in sorting that out. It’s not that the bill prohibits restoration of our relationships per-se; it just completely ignores the issue. It’s almost as if they’re really embarrassed about what they did to us and hope that by not mentioning it, it’ll just go away.

Oh, right…

I’m married, my relationship has turned acrimonious. We have a house/kids/shared stamp collection [delete as applicable], it’s all really toxic, does this affect my rights under this bill?

I have some bad news for you. You might want to sit down.

The stuff about marriage being no impediment to getting a Gender Recognition Certificate any more … that’s not entirely true.

When you apply for a GRC, if you’re married, you need your spouse to consent in writing to you getting a GRC.

That’s right – this person who probably has a restraining order against you, and is threatening to never let you see your children again, and has told all your mutual friends that you’re dead, or have been kidnapped by penguins, or anything to escape the shame of being married to one of them, this person has a veto over your legal gender.

It’s only a temporary veto. If they don’t sign the form and you apply for a GRC, you get an Interim Gender Recognition Certificate. You then have to go through the annulment process as before. Your partner can stall this for a bit by not responding to court letters and hiring solicitors and stuff. Basically, you have to go through the pain of an acrimonious divorce before you can have a Gender Recognition Certificate, even if you’ve been separated for years, probably on account of the stress your poor ex partner will have to go through if they realise that you have a piece of paper in your desk drawer which makes them officially gay.

A note on consummation

It’s not clear what this means for trans people who don’t have the expected genital configuration. If the government don’t tighten this up, expect another hilarious court case along the lines of Corbett v Corbett real soon now.

Conclusion

If the government were to publish a bill that provided for marriage for same sex couples, and then noticed that they got the bare minimal bit of Gender Recognition Act reform thrown in for free, but didn’t decide to actually go out of their way to do a single damned thing for trans people, it would would look exactly like this one.

Shame really – it showed so much promise. We’ve been thrown under the bus again, but it’s what we’re used to, right?

I’d better stop, as I seem to be getting a bit cross.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

A curious thing happened on Twitter, and in the papers over the course of the last week.

As far as I can tell, a small clique of journalists, apparently united by their love for lobster and champagne (yum!), and dislike for trans people (boo!), got upset over the discovery that Twitter isn’t like writing for a newspaper, where you can say something outrageous and any protest is filtered by a letters editor. Instead, if you say something outrageous, people tend to talk back.

One of them responded very badly to this discovery. A few people, most of whom probably weren’t trans, had engaged with her over an article she’d written. Initially this was apparently quite polite – certainly more polite than a lot of the stuff I get people tweeting at me.

In a display of “how not to do social media if you want a quiet life, free from throwing crockery at the wall”, she then tweeted a bunch of stuff about “getting your dick cut off” and suchlike.

This didn’t go down very well, and lots of people told her what they thought about this. Some of them were probably not polite, most of them were probably not trans. This led to what those audience members savvy in the ways of the Internet might term a “flounce” or a “rage quit”; she deleted her account and subsequently claimed to have been “hounded off Twitter”.

This was followed by one of her friends trotting out some line about how trans people are “bullies” and a “cabal”, and another of her friends publishing a letter detailing her resignation from humanity in the Observer (or was it the Guardian? It seems to depend whether you were reading it in dead-tree format, or online). The letter included snippets about how trans people are all bed wetters in bad wigs, how they use strange Latin words which she didn’t like the sound of, had twenty PhDs each, are “shemales”, and how we wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

To be honest, she doesn’t sound terribly likeable when she’s not, especially when it seems she’s previously written stuff about how it would be a good thing to shoot sex workers. Some of my friends are sex workers, and they’re nice people, and I’m not keen on the idea of them being shot, so not liking her is probably not much of a loss.

This whole episode can be seen in different ways. On the one hand, it can be seen as a failed attempt for newspapers trying to embrace social media in the face of a business model brought into decline by the existence of the Internet.

It probably works better as some sort of grotesque piece of theatre, in which trans people are portrayed as a shadowy cult, manipulating world governments through the art of wig-wearing and lobster munching luvvie journos, are pining for the return of the 1990s glory days in a world they no-longer understand; a world which includes trans people and iPhones, and trans people using iPhones.

You should probably skip it and go and see Les Mis instead.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I make no secret of my love of hot chillies. Chilli peppers together comprise the genus Capsicum, which also includes sweet peppers (really just chillies that have lost their ability to produce the irritant chemical, capsaicin, which is what gives chillies their heat). Most everyday chillies which people encounter, such as jalapeños or cayennes, are the species Capsicum annuum, which are relatively easy to grow even at the chilly (no pun intended) latitude of Cambridge, which is 52º north.

However, the really hot chillies, such as the habanero, scotch bonnet, naga jolokia and the current record holder, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, are Capsicum chinense. Both these species have stupid names; C. annuum is, like all chilli plants, perennial and not annual (this is important). C. chinense was so-named because someone who was presumably having an “unable to brain” moment allegedly decided they came from China.

No chillies come from China. All members of the Capsicum genus are descended from wild plants which originate in the West Indies, Central and South America. The ones we eat are cultivars which have been domesticated over thousands of years. C. chinense in particular comes from Cuba and the Lesser Antilles chain, as well as the nearby bits of South America. This is decidedly tropical, experiencing little in the way of seasonal temperature and daylight variations. They are used to growing in hot, bright, sunny conditions, and they’re fussy about it.

They hate it here. They’re difficult to germinate (naga jolokia won’t unless it spends about 6 weeks in soil which never drops below 28º), make tomatoes look frost tolerant and prone to dropping their fruit at the first sign of environmental stress. C. chinense is a true princess amongst chillies.

Which, along with their blistering heat and amazing fruity flavour, is what makes them so much fun to grow.

Despite the crappy year we have just had, what with it missing a summer and all, I have managed to grow a few viable habanero plants from seed (I started in late 2011) and had a half-decent crop of fruit. Now I’m thinking of next year and since I have some proven producers that managed to withstand a few months in my garden in one of the wettest summers on record. I am keen to keep them. Starting from seed each year is a drag and shortens the time they have to produce fruit.

The survivors are sitting on a windowsill in my dining room, enjoying direct sunlight. They’re a bit pot bound, so once I have all the remaining fruit from them (they are still flowering, but don’t seem to want to produce fruit at the moment, even when fertilised), they will be severely pruned back. This also keeps them a manageable size because there are six of them, and the window isn’t very big and chillies can make rather large houseplants if you let them get out of hand.

In addition, I have planted some naga jolokia seeds for next year. I’ve got 20 seeds, and this variety is so fussy that I might not get a single plant. To give them their best shot, I have them in a heated and thermostatically controlled propagator. They only take up half the room though, so it gave me an idea…

Since chillies are perennial, and even though they’re reluctant to fruit at the moment, my habaneros are producing copious amounts of new foliage, I have decided to try my hand at cloning them. A bag of seed compost, a few small plant pots and a tub of rooting hormone later I now have cuttings from my most prolific and tasty performers sitting alongside the (hopefully) germinating naga jolokia seeds. The plan being that each year I can have a stock of plants which can live outside in the summer. In winter I will take a few in, cut them back and overwinter them on the windowsill. In the meantime I will take cuttings from them and clone them in my propagator, ready to have a fresh bunch of plants to put outside the moment the conditions become right (hopefully around April).

In the meantime, I will keep the cuttings and the overwintering originals pruned back so they’re nice and small and manageable and not competing for every south-facing window in my house.

It’s too early yet to say whether this will work, but I have high hopes. Wish me luck! I’ll report back in the spring.

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Sound the blues and twos, eh boys and sound them far and wide!
Liberals want to congregate, but don’t let them inside!
We know they passed a motion; it’s pathetic that they tried.
Conference is not for these people.

The land! The land! Don’t let them on the land!
The land! The land! Inside the Brighton Grand.
Your name’s not down, your face don’t fit. Just tell it to the hand.
Conference is not for some people.

Hear the baffled voices on the left and on the right.
Liberals are just awkward sods, why do they have to fight?
It doesn’t affect me and mine, so it will be alright.
Conference is not for such people.

The land! The land! Don’t let them on the land!
The land! The land! Inside the Brighton Grand.
Your name’s not down, your face don’t fit. Just tell it to the hand.
Conference is not for some people.

Clear away the protestors, they don’t look very nice.
If they won’t go, then kettle ‘em: squeeze them like a vice.
Their leaders shouldn’t make a fuss; not fighters, more like mice.
Conference is just for nice people.

The land! The land! Don’t let them on the land!
The land! The land! Inside the Brighton Grand.
Your name’s not down, your face don’t fit. Just tell it to the hand.
Conference is not for some people.

Security theatre marches on, all hail the corporate state!
Contracting with G4S, securing your debate!
No liquids, flags or dissent please. You’re trans? Whatever mate.
Conference is not for the people.

By Sarah Brown, @auntysarah

Originally published at Sarah Brown's Blog. You can comment here or there.

The marriage equality consultation closes this week. I have waited until this week to submit my response in order to respond from a position of being aware of issues that have arisen as a result of public debate around the consultation.

However, the consultation closes in 3 days. The homophobes have been out in force and have, as I understand it, swamped the process with negative responses suggesting that the existing discriminatory situation should remain. Many of these objections are based on the idea that marriage is “owned” by churches. This is, of course, nonsense. Marriage predates any currently practiced religion as a concept and civil marriages have outnumbered religious marriages in this country for some time.

Indeed, while a push by certain churches to claim ownership of marriage as a religious, and not civil institution, might be intellectually respectable (even if I don’t for one second agree with it), it is deeply unfortunate that this push comes after years of marriage quite clearly being a civil institution for most people entering into it, and at a time where the government is consulting on extending civil marriage to same sex couples. It’s deeply unfortunate because the genuine concern of these churches ends up looking really, really homophobic, which I expect they’re mortified about.

Finally, the government has made it quite clear that they are not proposing to allow religious same sex marriage (this is something I disagree with, but I understand their need to propose what will get through both houses of Parliament), and that the consultation is about how same sex marriage will now be introduced, and not if it will. This means that the thousands of astroturfed responses suggesting it shouldn’t be allowed at all are basically trolling.

This is why it’s really important to get some sensible responses to the consultation from people who are in a position of being able to take advantage of LGBT-friendly reform to marriage and gender recognition law:

• If you are gay, lesbian or bisexual, and might one day want to benefit from state recognition of your relationship, this consultation is about you.
• If you might ever be a participant in the gender recognition process (either you’re trans, or you might one day be in a relationship with someone who is), this consultation is about you.
• If you are married and feel that it’s a patriarchal institution which you disagree with, but you need to be able to operate a joint account with your partner in an uncomplicated way and would rather have a civil partnership, this consultation is about you.

Please answer it. Do it now, or do it tomorrow or the day after, but don’t wait any longer than that because it will be too late. You can do it online – it takes five minutes. Please just do it.

Anyway, here are my answers. Please feel free to use them as a template

Question 1. Do you agree or disagree that all couples, regardless of their gender, should be able to have a civil marriage ceremony?

Agree

Question 2. Please explain the reasons for your answer, limiting your response to 1,225 characters (approx 200 words):

There is a discrimination issue that needs to be addressed: the current situation where marriage exists for opposite sex couples and civil partnership exists for same sex couples represents segregation in society along sexual orientation grounds. This can make non heterosexual people feel like “second class citizens”.

Those who do not identify as either male or female are not served by either institution and must misrepresent themselves to gain access to one of them at present.

I have been through the GRA dissolution/conversion to civil partnership process. I regard my marriage as having been taken from me under duress and feel a great injustice has been done to myself, my wife and those like us. This must not be allowed to continue.

Question 3. If you identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual would you wish to have a civil marriage ceremony?

Agree

Question 4. If you represent a group of individuals who identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual would those you represent wish to have a civil marriage ceremony?

N/A

Question 5. The government does not propose to open up religious marriage to same-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree with this proposal?

Disagree – religious marriage should be opened up to same-sex couples

Question 6. Do you agree or disagree with keeping the option of civil partnerships once civil marriage is made available to same-sex couples?

Agree

Question 7. If you identify as being lesbian, gay or bisexual and were considering making a legal commitment to your partner, would you prefer to have a civil partnership or a civil marriage?

Civil marriage

Question 8. The government is not considering opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples because we have been unable to identify a need for this. However, we appreciate that there are a number of views on this issue.

Disagree – civil partnerships should be opened up to opposite-sex couples

Question 9. If you are in a civil partnership would you wish to take advantage of this policy and convert your civil partnership into a marriage?

Yes

Question 10. We would not propose introducing a time limit on the ability to convert a civil partnership into a marriage.

Agree – there shouldn’t be a time limit

Question 11. Do you think there should be an option to have a civil ceremony on conversion of a civil partnership into a marriage?

Yes, there should be an option

Question 12. If you are a married transsexual person, would you want to take advantage of this policy and remain in your marriage while obtaining a full Gender Recognition Certificate?

Yes

Question 13. If you are the spouse of a transsexual person, would you want to take advantage of this policy and remain in your marriage whilst your spouse obtained a full Gender Recognition Certificate?

N/A

Question 14. Do you have any comments on the assumptions or issues outlined above? If so, please provide details in the space below, limiting your response to 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

Religious same sex marriage should be available to those organisations which want it. Equalities legislation should not be used to force unwilling organisations to conduct religious same sex marriage.

Because marriage equality and the existence of same sex civil unions varies hugely internationally, the recognition of relationships originating outside the UK should be done in as flexible a way as possible. Same sex couples coming to the UK from countries where no same sex union recognition exists at all should be allowed to be regarded as married for immigration purposes if that is the defacto nature of their relationship.
 
Question 15. Are you aware of any costs or benefits that exist to either the public or private sector, or individuals that we have not accounted for in the impact assessment? If so, please provide details in the space below, limiting your response to 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

Those of us who underwent the GRA dissolution process have already had to pay to have our existing marriages dissolved and to be re-registered as civil partners. We should not have to pay again to put this injustice right.

Some who have undergone dissolution under the GRA, and are now civil partners, may have had pension contributions adversely affected. These should be reinstated as if the marriage was continuous.

Question 16. Do you have any other comments on the proposals within this consultation? If so, please provide details in the space below, limiting your response to 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

Civil partnerships should be made available regardless of gender. This is both for equality reasons, and to prevent coercive dissolution of civil partnerships where one or both partners are transsexual and wish to undergo gender recognition.

The marriages confiscated under the GRA, and converted into civil partnerships, should be allowed to be reinstated. This is correcting an injustice and the reinstatement should be effective from the date of the original marriage. Marriage certificates should be reissued in either the current names and genders of the partners, or the former ones (provide the option). If this is not done, those who undergo gender recognition in future will have their marriages recognised, but those of us who have already undergone it won’t, creating a “lost decade”.

If birth certificates can be reissued, so can marriage certificates. This is hugely important to those of us who want our marriages back.

The GRA dissolution process is bureaucratic and works very poorly. Conversion between civil partnerships and marriage should be made simple. It should be as easy as applying for a passport.

Those in marriages should be allowed to convert to a civil partnership if they wish.