A world where men have babies and women have male genitals would be “good for us all”, a member of the House of Lords has extraordinarily claimed.
Lord Lucas spoke out in a debate about the Government’s new LGBT Action Plan and its consultation on weakening laws on gender reassignment.
His speech was welcomed by other Peers.
Lord Lucas, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who describes himself as a libertarian, said it was time to “free up the world for all of us”.
He said, “if we are moving to a world where it will become commonplace, if uncommon, for men to have babies and women to have penises, that is the end of the fiction of binary gender. I absolutely think that that is good for us all.”
While calling for “great care” from the Government on allowing children to get ‘sex change’ drugs, he said showing a “wholehearted commitment to change gender” should be enough for adults.
Labour’s Lord Cashman and Baroness Gale described his speech as “wonderful”.
In her response to the debate, Minister of State Baroness Williams of Trafford reiterated the Government’s pledge of a further £4.5 million for LGBT issues, and said more details would be forthcoming.
The Baroness gave a commitment to keep single-sex and separate sex services protected for women, as long as “doing so can be convincingly demonstrated to be a proportionate means of meeting a legitimate aim”.
Last month, the Prime Minister backed the consultation on changing sex.
Mrs May has previously indicated her support for ‘self-declaration’ – where a man can legally change sex simply by saying he is a woman, and vice versa.
Transsexualism – wanting to change physical sex because you feel you are ‘in the wrong body’ – has become an increasingly high-profile issue. People in the public eye have ‘changed their sex’, and the media normalises transsexualism. There has been a corresponding push for greater transsexual rights. This briefing introduces some of the issues at stake.