In Hong Kong, it is perfectly acceptable to graduate from rags to riches or indeed to move from being a loyal subject of the colonial government to a flag-waving patriot extolling the virtues of the Communist Party.
However, when it comes to change on a far more personal level, involving people who are uncomfortable with their gender, serious problems with the law arise.
This was highlighted this week when a transsexual woman was barred from marrying a man on the grounds that, at birth, she was male, although she has undergone surgery to complete the transformation and is classified as female on official identification documents.
The court took the view that permitting marriage in this case was a matter of public policy rather than interpretation of the law. The ball is therefore back in the government's court. What needs to be decided is not whether the government approves of transsexuality or indeed of homosexuality but the extent to which the state needs to take a view on what are essentially personal matters.
The law currently denies legal recognition to same-sex and changed-sex partnerships, which in effect means depriving rights to a significant minority of the population.
Homosexuality is far more widespread than transsexuality, yet it is largely a taboo subject among decision-makers who seem to wish that gay people would simply hide away. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, homosexual partners are being granted rights of marriage, pension rights as couples and a range of other rights that apply to conventional married partners.
The state needs to get involved here because bestowing statutory rights is a matter of public policy. However, the recognition of certain types of relationship, and indeed of a person's sexuality, gets confused with value judgments. The more ardent moralist campaigners do not recognise the distinction between the private domain of what is permissible among consenting adults and the public domain of how society regards these relationships. They usually shroud their bigoted views under the guise of 'protecting children'. As some of the most appalling cases of child sexual abuse have occurred from within the Catholic Church, a bastion of moral judgment on this issue, the credibility of this protestation is distinctly questionable.
