It is difficult to describe the emotion felt by lesbian and women’s rights campaigners when Lord Hodge announced the outcome of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers at the Supreme Court this morning. It was the culmination of a struggle for justice which has lasted years and during which we have been vilified as bigots and threatened with death and sexual violence. Some of us have lost jobs, positions and career prospects as a result of standing up for what we knew was right.
No less a person than Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon called us bigots, transphobes, racists and homophobes. She said that our concerns were ‘not valid’. The highest court in the land has told her she was wrong. An apology to the women of Scotland is in order.
Now we have clarity that the terms ‘man’, ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refer to biological sex. Men who identify as women do not become women for the purposes of equality law, not even if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). As
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