Proposal for full sex change surgery before marriage allowed ‘unnecessary’

A proposed legal change that would force transgender people to have full sex-change surgery before they can marry is inappropriate and unnecessary, the anti-discrimination chief says.

Equal Opportunities Commission head Dr York Chow Yat-ngok said the clause in the Marriage (Amendment) Bill - introduced after a court overturned a ban on transgender marriages - would in fact deter such people from seeking to marry.

"It would be unfair to impose such an invasive medical procedure as a legal prerequisite for marriage, which is supposed to be an equal right," he said.

Transsexual "W", who won the right to marry her male fiancé in a landmark case in the Court of Final Appeal in May last year, had undergone the surgery.

However, the court left open the question of whether surgery should be a prerequisite for marriage.

Chow said up to 60 to 70 per cent of transgender people did not go through the extremely invasive and difficult medical procedure that brought massive changes to a person's body.

"To say [a person] must complete the whole gender reassignment surgery to be allowed to marry, will probably deter more transgender people from being able to get married," Chow said, adding that there was no need to amend marriage laws in "such a stringent way".