The Gender Recognition Bill has completed its Parliamentary process and will become law next year. Under its provisions a Gender Recognition Panel will have responsibility for issuing new birth certificates for transsexual people. The Bill proposes a potential legal threat to churches, Christian organisations and sports clubs who may be open to litigation for refusing to treat transsexual people as members of their chosen, rather than biological sex.

The belief now enshrined in statute, that gender is determined by a person's personal convictions rather than objective fact, fits easily with the postmodern notion that 'we are what we think we are'. The reality is that Gender Identity Disorder is a disorder of thinking characterised by an unshakeable false belief that one has been born with a body of the wrong sex.[1] Surgical, hormonal and legal fixes do not deal with the real problem.

Rather than rubber-stamping radical irreversible surgical procedures, people in the caring professions need to provide compassionate professional support for people that does not involve any form of deception. As Christian doctors we must affirm the dignity of transsexual people and protect them from discrimination, but we must also be honest and professional.