The legislation to amend Western Australia’s gender recognition act, and bring an end to forced divorces for transgender people, has finally passed in the Legislative Assembly.
The law currently requires people who are apply to change their gender to be single. People who are married and wish to change their gender must first divorce their spouse. The requirement was to stop the creation of same-sex marriages prior to marriage equality being achieved.
Last year when the federal marriage laws were changed, allowing same sex couples to wed, states were given one year to bring their laws into order. The Western Australian government has until 9th December to pass legislation. While most states removed the outdated laws quickly, Western Australia and Tasmania have yet to take action.
This evening the Legislative Assembly passed the bill and it will now proceed to the Legislative Council. There are eight sitting days remaining this year for the bill to be dealt with.
Both the government and the opposition agreed that the short bill needed to be passed to remove the discrimination faced by married transgender people, but the debate over the bill has dragged on for several weeks.
Attorney General John Quigley commented today saying the debate had taken a detour into the culture wars. While hours of parliaments time have been dedicated to the discussion very little of it has been about transgender people or the struggles they face.
Politicians have argued over which party had the best record on LGBTI rights reform, the influence of religious groups on the Liberal party, federal members voting records on marriage legislation and whether or not it was necessary to bring ther topic of pediphilia into the recent debate over surrogacy laws.
OIP Staff
