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Equality Bill [HL]

I strongly oppose the amendments because they would massively complicate a controversial area of law which was recently rewritten by the Government’s Gender Recognition Act 2004. I fear that these amendments, which attempt to extend Part 2 to transsexualism, will reopen debates about forcing religious groups to compromise their doctrinal conviction that a person cannot change sex. We have already gone round this during the passage of the Gender Recognition Bill, when I quoted extensively from Parry v Vine Christian Centre. I have no intention of going into all that at the moment. But we know that some Churches have been threatened with legal action by transsexuals who are unhappy with the position of that Church. These amendments would create a new legal landscape in which we would see more legal actions of that sort.