A transgender woman
who has been twice turned down
by Hong Kong courts to have the
right to marry her boyfriend took
her case to the Court of Final
Appeal, which predictably did not
deliver a verdict on Tuesday, the
Hong Kong-based Mingpao Daily
reported.
The court case is
the first of its kind in Hong
Kong, where transsexual people are
forbidden from obtaining a marriage
license.
The woman, who the
newspaper referred to only as Ms
W, has twice lost her suit
against the local civil administration,
which refused to grant her and
her boyfriend a marriage license some
three years ago. The lower courts
denied her the right to marry
saying that marriage implies conceiving
children.
Monica Carss-Frisk, the
lawyer representing the marriage registration
authority in Hong Kong, argued that
marriage is between a natural-born man
and a natural-born woman and granting
a transgender a marriage license is
no different than a same-sex marriage,
which is outlawed, the news portal
chinanews.com reported.
The
woman's lawyer, David Pannick, argued
that it's ridiculous that the
law would allow his client to
marry another woman even though she
is one.
The trial sparked
heated online discussion.
Peng
Xiaohui, a sexologist with Central
China Normal University, told the
Global Times on Wednesday that Chinese
people's attitudes toward other
people's sexual orientation are
changing faster than the legal
system.
"People with higher
education tend to have more tolerance
but there is a long way to
go to change the discriminatory
situation transsexuals face," Peng
added.
While same-sex marriage
is still not permitted on the
mainland, heterosexual marriages involving a
transgender partner are. The first
transgender marriage on the Chinese
mainland took place in Nanjing in
May, 2009, the Jiangnan Times
reported.
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