In 2014, the United Kingdom topped the Rainbow Index, an annual ranking of LGBT equality published by a European human rights group.
As of May, the UK has fallen to fourth place.
To understand why, one need only consult the many broadsides being issued against transgenderpeople in the British press, as the government weighs reforms to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, a piece of legislation that allowed those who transitioned from one gender to another to apply for a certificate that formally certifies the change.
The months-long backlash to the idea of reforming the GRA was one of the only negative factors that the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association cited in their evaluation of the UK for the Rainbow Index this May.
The Index notes that, after the UK government announced last July that it would seek public input on modernizing the GRA, there was “a rise in transphobic commentary across traditional media platforms and online.” That transphobic discourse got so bad that, as ILGA-Europe noted, one British transgender woman successfully sought residency in New Zealand “after facing years of discrimination” at home.
The transphobic commentary finally reached fever pitch this month, as the public consultation process nears its Oct. 19 end date. To give one of many recent examples, the UK newspaper Metro, as Pink News reported, published a full-page advertisement that raised the specter of “fully intact male-bodied prisoners” being allowed to “live with women in prison” if the GRA were reformed.
That’s not to mention the several opinion pieces and newspaper columns that position GRA reform as a threat to women’s rights—a common anti-transgender talking point that has been leveraged successfully in the United States to swat down LGBT-inclusive legislation in Houston and pass a “bathroom bill” in North Carolina, among other things.
But fears about GRA reform aren’t confined to the press, either: As The Sunday Times reported this past weekend, Conservative MPs in Parliament would be overwhelmingly opposed to making changes to the GRA that would bring the UK’s policy in line with countries like Norway and Ireland, which both allow citizens to declare their gender with minimal gatekeeping. Read more via Daily Beast