INTERVIEW-UK campaigner eyes final push with ‘genderless’ passports hearing

A man cannot become a woman and a woman cannot become a man.

The biggest claim of the transgender movement is that a man who thinks he’s a woman can really be a woman, and vice versa. You see this in many ways — from preferred pronouns, sex reassignment surgeries, and demands to use the restroom of perceived rather than given gender.

The problem is that this is a philosophical claim that is not true, and can never be true, in any way or form. A man’s chromosomes cannot be engineered into female chromosomes. Altering one’s appearance cosmetically or surgically cannot change the underlying reality of a person’s biological make-up. The psychology of the mind cannot override the facts of a person’s biological markers. The transgender revolution demands that we believe falsehoods about human nature. And truth and falsehood have never been a matter of majority vote, because we know that there is a Creator who has the authority to decide and state what is right and wrong.

CHELTENHAM, England, April 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In a 25-year battle to have the identity of genderless people recognised in British passports, Christie Elan-Cane fought depression and unemployment.

The campaigner, who was born female but identifies as neither male nor female, wants the government to change its passport policy and introduce a third category for people who regard themselves as genderless.

Elan-Cane could move a step closer to realising that goal when the high court holds a hearing on Wednesday and Thursday to review the government’s passport policy.

The current system allows applicants to tick only a male or female option, and does not provide for a genderless alternative, which is usually symbolised with an ‘X’.

It is the first legal challenge against that policy, Elan-Cane said.

“I’m quite apprehensive because it could go either way, and the future direction of what I’m doing and the lives of a lot of people will be dependent on this,” Elan-Cane said.

“I can’t remember when I last slept a night,” Elan-Cane told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in Cheltenham, a town in southwest England.PM00 : 01 / 01 : 52YO

The 60-year-old first started campaigning for awareness of genderless people in 1992 after shedding a female identity and taking on a gender-neutral one.

Although Britain recognised the gender identity of trans people in the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, Elan-Cane said the decision to identify as non-gendered had drastic consequences, including being forced out of work and facing discrimination.

“I find it very degrading that I have to fight to achieve (a) legitimate identity that most people can take for granted within gendered society,” Elan-Cane said.

After initially raising the issue of ‘X-passports’ with the British passport office in 1995, the campaigner went on to seek support from a local parliamentarian in 2005.

In 2013, London-based law firm Clifford Chance took on the case pro bono and has since represented Elan-Cane.

Narind Singh, a partner at Clifford Chance who is leading the legal team, said in a statement that X-passports were “a crucial step” in protecting the rights of genderless people.

Without such documents, Singh said, they faced an “unacceptable choice between forgoing a passport, and making a false declaration, and using a passport which misrepresents their identity”.

The law firm told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was hopeful for a positive outcome, but expected it would be weeks before a decision was made.

The British-based charity Stonewall, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, said it supported a move for X-passports, and wanted government documents accurately to reflect gender identity.

LGBT, or GLBT, is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay in reference to the LGBT community beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. Activists believed that the term gay community did not accurately represent all those to whom it referred.

“Many trans people are afraid to travel abroad for fear of intrusive questioning or difficulties at passport control,” said Laura Russell, head of policy at Stonewall, by email.

Britain would join Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Malta, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Ireland and Canada if it were to issue genderless passports.

A government spokesperson said it would be inappropriate to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

Should the court rule the current passport policy unlawful, it could increase pressure to amend the law, Elan-Cane said. And if not, the campaigner said, there was still hope that change would be only a matter of time.

The Bible says that God created “male and female” and He pronounced His creation “very good” (Genesis 1:27, 31). God’s plan was perfect, but, as with everything in mankind’s sphere, perfection was corrupted by sin. Sin brought anomalies, and we would be hard pressed to understand where the touch of this contamination ends in the creation. Could an anomaly sometimes occur in gender, physically or mentally? We acknowledge that a person can be born with a combination of male and female organs—although one’s true, biological sex can be determined through medical tests.

This we know, that we are involved in a spiritual battle for our souls. The world seeks to conform us to its mold, which is why we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2). Satan attempts to deceive us and urges us to question God’s plan. One of the devil’s ploys is to make us dissatisfied with how God made us. To some he whispers, “You’re fat and ugly.” To others, “You’re stupid and clumsy.” And to still others, “You look like a boy, but you’re really a girl.” In each case, the underlying message is the same: “God messed up on you.”

A Christian worldview informed by the Bible can fully explain why people experience feelings of gender dysphoria. The Christian worldview is one that acknowledges that creation has been disrupted and is not the way it once was, nor how it will eventually be in the New Creation (Genesis 3; Romans 8; Revelation 21). No part of our existence in the universe has been left undisturbed by sin’s effects. This means that the brokenness of creation reaches into every corner of our lives — even our minds and hearts. To the same degree, every human is made in God’s image. To differing degrees and in differing ways, every human struggles with the brokenness of our own bodies, desires, and thoughts. And to the same degree, every human can find their true identity by recognizing that the God who made them has also saved for them and will one day restore them.

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