An Angus MSP has said any Bill to legalise same-sex marriage in Scotland must include protection for devoutly religious people whose partner has undergone sex swap surgery.
The Scottish Government intends to introduce a Bill to legalise gay marriage in Scotland this week. Currently, anyone married person in Scotland who wants a sex-change a must divorce before the procedure can go ahead.
However, once it is legal to marry someone of the same gender, there will no longer be a need to divorce as marriages between two people of the same gender will no longer be against the law.
SNP Angus South MSP Graeme Dey said: “Whilst I intend to support the Bill in general I have concerns over a possible consequence of one aspect of what the Equal Marriage Campaign is calling for.
“This relates to the issue of transgender people, who if married or in a civil partnership, are currently forced to divorce in order to have their true gender recognised under the law.
“I am concerned that if this is taken forward we could end up, admittedly on rare occasions, where a mixed sex couple have split up because the man intends going through a gender change but the wife, perhaps for religious reasons, won’t divorce.
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