READER M Ross is right to say that the only rights are equal rights, and we all have the right to be different (Letters, July 18), although I find Caitlin Logan’s assertion about non-binary people in the context of recent discussion about sex and gender issues to be somewhat problematic, particularly as there seems a determined attempt by the trans lobby to foment confusion by muddying the waters about the two.
Of course Ross is right, and non-binary people come under his assertion. But the intrinsic fact about real equality is that it can’t be achieved by raising one group to equality status by diminishing the status of another.
And that was the precise failure of the recent fundamentally flawed Gender Recognition Reform Act, which failed to heed the status of women and attempted to redefine that sex in a wholly unnatural and unfair way.
READ MORE: Caitlin Logan: Government must not abandon non-binary people
The second failure was to adopt an effective “recruiting” strategy for young vulnerable people by riding roughshod over the fundamental right we all enjoy to experience the natural function of puberty by dropping the age of “equality” to 16, the very age when bodies are adjusting to the maturing process.
The Cass review has illustrated real concern around puberty blockers and support for those affected by sex and gender issues. The reduction/abandoning of professional support, scurrilously associated with “conversion therapy” by lobbyists, has been shown by Cass to be extremely dangerous and failing those involved.
So, difference yes, but there is no legitimate right to use equality as an excuse to impact your own preferences – whether through direct or social and media influence – onto others who may be receptive for the wrong reasons, and risking their potential ongoing harm.
The reality, however, is that equality for most is an illusion, accessible only if one has the financial resources to enforce it in a legal, professional or personal sense.
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Government introduces a natural tension surrounding issues of equality. It is supposed to run all legislation through the prism of equalities legislation to ensure compliance. It rarely does until challenged – the GRR Act a clear case in point – and then only by those who can afford to combat the deep pockets of the public purse; the fundamental tenet of equality denied by the lack of legal aid for individuals to take on the privileged and powerful.
The King’s Speech highlighted another matter of equality denial – the red tory Labour government’s proposed adoption of the Tory smoking ban wheeze (so much for change, eh?) where a year will be chosen as the starting point where those born in that year will not be allowed to purchase tobacco during their whole lifetime.
Notwithstanding the proposed Bill will be ineffective – it will just switch tobacco supplies from licensed distribution to a grateful burgeoning black market – the lack of equality in the proposal is obviously outrageous.
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The proposal is to treat two people standing in a queue differently in an arbitrary way. One year apart in age, who’s going to know the difference? And there’s the nub of it.
We’re going to need ID cards, remember them? Abandoned as a big-brother control mechanism, doesn’t this smoking ban proposal suggest the ideal platform to return ID cards and personal data harvesting to the front burner?
There’s nothing like a devious establishment government sneaking unpopular anti-citizen laws in by the back door, and it’s a bonus using inequality to achieve it.
The sad fact is we’ve just elected a classically stupid PM, heading up a party with no citizen consideration principles and quite prepared for whole generations to live their lives breaking a crazy law that separates them from the so-called “equality” they’re supposed to share with others.
Who’d ‘ave thunk it?
Jim Taylor
Scotland
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