Issue 7198	Friday, 2 February 2001

EA’s gender report angers transsexuals

by Briony Martin

TRANSSEXUALS have expressed disappointment and annoyance that the Evangelical Alliance (EA) did not consult them before publishing its report Transsexuality (News, 19 January).

The document, put out by the EA’s Policy Commission, follows an EA contribution to the Home Office consultation on transsexual rights.  It concluded that gender dysphoria (feeling trapped in a body of the wrong sex) was psychological rather than physical, and that gender-redesignation surgery was unnecessary and undesirable.

“I would have expected that anybody taking a sincere Christian approach would talk and listen to all those involved in the issue,” said Claire McNab, a spokeswoman for the transsexual-rights group, Press For Change, on Tuesday.  “They’re talking about our lives, not theirs.  But the first we heard of the EA’s interest was when they submitted a report to the Home Office last year.”

Press For Change, which represents more than 1500 British transsexuals, had written to and telephoned the EA, offering to meet, Ms McNab said.  But beyond a “polite acknowledgement”, these overtures had been “consistently refused”.

In a letter to the Church Times (Letters, 26 January), Bernadette Rogers, chairwoman of an Anglican parish council, asked: “Why do they not talk to some of us committed, working Christians who have been reassigned?”

The Revd David Horton, honorary chaplain of the Sibyls, a group of transgendered Christians, said this week that the EA were “just not interested” in hearing about his work in the area.  “Within their own constraints, they do a fair job,” he said.  “But they only talk to people of their own persuasion.”

Iain Taylor, a spokesman for the EA, on Tuesday defended the Transsexuality report.

“This is a report of the utmost academic integrity, and the authors do not feel that there is anything missing from it,” he said.  Don Horrocks, head of the EA’s Policy Commission, had consulted at least ten transsexual sources.  These included a transsexual Christian in Coventry, the Revd David Horton’s Grove booklet on transsexuality (now out of print), and a Dutch academic.

Mr Taylor’s view of those who questioned the EA’s approach was that they were “highly political organisations, at the extreme wing of the issue.  This is a bunch of people, who have, quite frankly, become obsessive about their particular position.  There is no way that they would invite the EA to contribute to their reports, so we took the view that we would not give them a platform.”

The EA report condemns much of the research done on the issue of transsexuality as “dubious” and “partisan”.  In its “Useful Addresses” section, the report recommends only one organisation, the Parakaleo Ministry, sponsored by Youth With A Mission, which, according to a spokesman, sets out to “mentor people who want to resume biological sex”.

Parakaleo receives an average of one call a day from church leaders wanting guidance on pastoring transsexuals, said its spokesman.  But “very few” transsexuals approach it themselves.

Ms McNab thinks the EA should have consulted other groups that work with or represent transsexuals, a good number of whom are “regular participants in congregations of all denominations.

“The EA needs to listen very carefully to those with whom it disagrees,” she said.  “If people get the idea from the Church that people like us are not genuine, what message does that give?”

There are 2-3000 transsexuals in Britain.  Between 100 and 200 gender-redesignation operations take place each year; but hormone therapy, and social identification as the opposite sex, are also used as part of gender transition.  According to a 1997 survey by Liberty, a campaign group, Britain, Ireland, Albania and Andorra are alone in Europe in refusing to accord an appropriate legal status to transsexuals after gender-redesignation treatment.

The Government is currently in consultation about whether transsexuals should be allowed to change the sex given on their birth certificate.