As some of you will know, there is an “Equality” bill currently progressing through the UK parliament. There are many bad things about the bill, some of which I have written about before, but not all of this is deliberate. Writing laws is hard, especially when you have smart lawyers ready and waiting to pick holes in everything you do.
The really bad stuff is, I think, a result of MPs having been convinced of the need for exceptions in “special cases”. They try to be fair to everyone, but with something like an civil rights the minute you create a special case you drive a coach and horses through the protections you are supposed to be creating, because everyone who wants to carry on discriminatory practices will immediately begin to present what they do in a manner in which, their lawyers can argue, they qualify for the exemption. In the case of this particular bill the loopholes are so loosely written that merely claiming to be prejudiced against trans people gives you the right to discriminate against them.
A really spectacular mistake can be found in the bill’s definition of trans people. It presents two examples, one of a person who has undergone hormone treatment and surgery, and one who merely chooses to live in the opposite gender, does so full time, and is generally accepted by society in that gender. Those are indeed two very common types of trans people (though it doesn’t cover everyone). However, in the first example the person described has transitioned from male to female, whereas in the second example the person has transitioned from female to male. The effect of this, once it gets into the courts, will be that female-to-male trans people are protected in all circumstances, but male-to-female trans people will be protected only if they have had surgery, because lawyers will argue that the examples clearly show that MtFs are held to a more stringent requirement than FtMs.
It is a messy business, making laws, but if you don’t get it right then you can create exactly the opposite effect to what you intended to do.