I was lucky enough to be in the gallery of the Scottish Parliament just before Christmas to watch a small, but extremely important victory for LGBTQ+ rights as MSPs at Holyrood passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
After over six years of intense debate, two public consultations, ten weeks of committee evidence both in favour and against the law, interventions from the United Nations, hundreds of amendments and all day debates at Parliament into the wee hours – at last we have a law that gives trans people the right to be legally recognised for who they are without having to go through years of invasive medical questions and bureaucratic hurdles.
In some ways it’s a small change. All the law does is allow trans people from the age of 16 to apply to have the sex on their birth certificate changed without bureaucrats and doctors who are not trans having to give permission.
