Advocates call on the government to scrap forced trans divorce and surgery
Image: The trans float at the 2017 Mardi Gras. Photo: Ann-Marie Calilhanna.
Activists are calling for state and territory governments to remove the requirement for trans people to undergo surgery and be unmarried before changing the sex on their birth certificates.
Despite same-sex marriage now being legal, most states and territories still require trans people who are married to divorce before changing their sex, QNews has reported.
The federal same-sex marriage bill gave states and territories a 12-month period to amend their legislation in line with marriage equality.
Advocacy group Trans Health Australia this week wrote to state and territory governments leaders asking for the compulsory divorce requirement to be scrapped when their parliaments resume.
“This cruel transgender divorce requirement has undermined our families and discriminated against transgender partners and parents by making them choose between their marriage or legal recognition of their identity,” they wrote.
“It is not fair or just that the transgender community should have to wait longer than is absolutely necessary for the implementation of marriage equality and the acceptance of same-sex marriages created by the amendment of birth certificates.
“We urge you to move forward on this matter as soon as parliament resumes in 2018 or as soon as is practical.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee last year declared that Australia’s requirement that trans people divorce before changing their legal sex violates international human rights law.
Advocates are also asking state and territory governments to scrap laws requiring sterilising surgery before trans people can correct their birth certificates.
Other countries have abolished this requirement as a human rights violation, and Sweden last year ruled that trans people who had undergone unwanted surgery to change their identification would be paid compensation.
A petition is calling for the requirement for surgery to be abolished in the states and territories where it still exists.
While South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory allow birth certificates to be changed without surgery or divorce, other parts of the country still require both.
Trans activists have been lobbying the remaining state and territory governments to change their requirements for years, occasionally progressing to parliamentary bills that have not passed.
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This would be a dream come true for a lot of Non-Op Transgender People who wish not for the SRS Treatments. Also for our Sister’s and Brothers in the Trans Community have to break up happy marriages just to apeas Births, Death and Marriage Authorities in their respective states.