Fury mounts as Manchester LGBT+ charity severs ties with human rights organisation over ‘extremely damaging’ statements

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

The LGBT Foundation has announced it has severed ties with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) after it made a number of ‘extremely damaging’ statements.

The Manchester-based charity said the EHRC’s recent statements relating to conversion therapy legislation and reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) ‘cannot be supported in any circumstances’.

Yesterday (January 26), the EHRC wrote to the Scottish Government to say it was ‘concerned at the polarised debate’ regarding reforms of the GRA, which would enable trans and non-binary people the right to self-identify.

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Scottish Government ministers have already expressed plans to reform the act and make it easier for people to legally change their gender and self-identify.

But the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said ‘further consideration is needed before any change to the law should be made’.

In a letter to Shona Robison, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, EHRC Chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner said there were ‘concerns about the potential implications of changing the current criteria’ for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC)’.

Baroness Falkner said that ‘potential consequences’ included drug testing in competitive sport, measures to address barriers facing women and practices within the criminal justice system.

While the letter recognised how ‘many trans people have criticised the current process to obtain a GRC as being intrusive’ and also said it was concerned ‘about the unacceptably long waiting times for gender identity services’, Baroness Falkner said there was a need to