Transsexuals launch legal challenge

LONDON - Two transsexuals yesterday launched a legal challenge against rules which ban people from officially changing their …

LONDON - Two transsexuals yesterday launched a legal challenge against rules which ban people from officially changing their sexual identity.

In Britain, a highly qualified academic "P", and the second applicant "G", who both cannot be named for legal reasons, applied for a judicial review of the "distressing, humiliating and embarrassing" refusal of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages to allow them alter their sex from male to female on their birth certificates.

The test cases have widespread implications for thousands of other people who, like P and G, have undergone "gender reassignment" treatment.