http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/22/experience-birth-certificate-says-woman-is-a-man

😯

That’s bizarre – Kafkaesque even.

Bloody bureaucrats 🙄

Dreadful.

I get the sanctity of birth certificates, but an inbuilt inability to correct human error cannot be right.

i suspect only an Act of Parliament would fix this.

That story makes me despair on so many levels, from the knuckle-draggers in her local community, to the CofE’s behaviour as represented by the Archibishop of Canterbury. His decision not to recognise a marriage which is clearly valid in every aspect of his religious experience, just not in paper-pushing ones, is utterly gobsmacking.

His decision not to recognise a marriage which is clearly valid in every aspect of his religious experience, just not in paper-pushing ones, is utterly gobsmacking.

It’s a clerical error!

Ahem, sorry.

That makes absolutely no sense to me, not even in a gods-endorsed homophobic way. She’s not transgender (not that that should matter but, y’know, churches), she’s just had someone make a mistake on a form once.

^ I agree with everything you’ve just said.

It’s hard to believe that a simple mistake all those years ago could have such big impacts now. I understand what they can’t change the original record, but why the amendment couldn’t be made and that fixes everything I’ve no idea.

It’s strange. A few years ago I required a replacement for my long lost birth certificate. Went to the local office who provided one for a small fee. Had a look and noticed my date of birth was a different month to what I had been using all my life. They changed it on the system there and then with no further questions or asking for evidence and printed me a new one. Seemed so slack at the time as well.

Births, deaths and marriages did offer to reregister my birth, which would allow me to have a passport with “female” on it again, but I would be registered as female only from when the correction was made: the original – and legal – entry would still say “Boy”.

Reading between the lines, it does sound like there was a “fix” after which she could have fought the original bureaucratic mistake without causing the problems she faced. Kind of sounds to me like she probably didn’t like the practical approach and went all for nothing on confrontational approach.