MGRM will be launching a Proposed Gender Identity Bill for Malta which seeks to offer comprehensive legal protection and redress to trans persons.
Malta Gay Rights Movement (MGRM) to launch gender identity Bill for legal protection to trans persons.
Joanne Cassar, who had been denied the opportunity to marry because (despite having undergone gender reassignment therapy) she was considered 'still a man', won her legal battle for the right to marry this week.
"The judgement made extensive reference to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which states that biology is not the sole determining factor in determining gender and that current thinking and practice also give considerable importance to psychological factors," MGRM coordinator Gabi Calleja said.
"Moreover, the ECHR held that the margin of appreciation allowed to States did not go so far as to permit the denial of a fundamental right such as the right to marry for persons of the opposite legal sex."
Mr Justice Raymond C. Pace cited a previous European Court of Human Rights ruling (Christine Goodwin vs. UK) which established that a ban on transgender marriage, of the kind imposed by the lower courts in previous rulings, violated Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the right to marry, to which Malta is signatory.
Effectively this frees Cassar to marry her long-standing (male) partner, but the Registrar of Marriages still has 20 days in which to appeal the ruling.
Cassar's battle began in May 2006, when the Registrar of Marriages refused to issue marriage banns for Cassar and her fiance on the grounds that the Marriage Act prohibited unions between persons of the same gender – and despite the fact that Cassar's birth certificate had been amended post-surgery to reflect her gender change.
The MGRM said that while this judgement is a step forward for all post-operative trans- persons. "a great deal still needs to be achieved for the rights of transgender persons to be fully respected."
Calleja said that the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency hascalled on EU Member States to "abolish divorce and genital surgery as preconditions to the rectification of the recorded sex or alteration of name on official documents."
On the 10 December – Human Rights Day – the MGRM will be launching a Proposed Gender Identity Bill for Malta which seeks to offer comprehensive legal protection and redress to trans persons. It is hoped that this will build on the progress that has been made in recent years.
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