Discrimination Against Transgender Parents is a Human Rights Violation, the European Court of Human Rights Rules
them reports that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has declared that denying parental rights due to gender identity is discriminatory.
The matter was brought to the courts attention by a transgender woman from Russia. The woman — referred to as A.M. by the European court — had continued to see her two children for one and a half year after her gender was legally recognized in 2015, and after her divorce.
Transphobic wife claims ex-spouse will harm children
Her former wife argued, however, that her ex-spouse seeing the children would negatively impact their morals and well-being of the kids. The Lyublinskiy District Court of Moscow agreed.
The Russian court order also claimed that visitation would violate Russia’s gay “propaganda” law by potentially exposing them to information regarding “non-traditional” sex.
ECHR cannot see any harm done to the children
them writes:
Upon appeal, the ECHR ruled that the decision to deny A.M. access to her children was made “in the absence of any demonstrable harm to the children.” According to the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch, judges claimed the order was not based on a “balanced and reasonable assessment.”
The potentially groundbreaking declaration of the rights of transgender parents also stated that Russia “applied the most restrictive measure possible” based only on “the request of the children’s mother.”
The ECHR added that “completely [depriving] the applicant of any contact with her children” could potentially “have irremediable consequences for relations between the child and the parent with whom that child does not live.”
The ECHR web site also states that the Court found that the domestic courts had not examined the particular circumstances of the family. Furthermore, it found that the decision had been clearly based on the applicant’s gender identity and had thus been biased.
The Russian court has no science to back up its decision
The ECHR press release also includes an interesting reference to a statement from a so-called expert group in Russia. It had stated that a “negative impact [would] be produced not by the individual and psychological profile of [A.M.] or her parenting style, but by the anticipated reaction of the children to their father’s gender transition”.
A later alternative expert report commissioned by A.M. was very critical of the reasoning behind the judgment, stating that the earlier expert report had been “unscientific in nature.” Indeed, the first “expert group” also admitted that there was no research to back up their argument.
The existence of transphobia is used to legitimize more transphobia
The “logic” behind all of this seems to be that trans women are to be denied the right to see their children because children are to be raised as transphobes, and will therefore hate their transgender parent. Indeed, the Moscow court even argued that the kids meeting their transgender parent could lead to an inferiority complex and bullying at school.
If you ever doubted the existence of systemic transphobia, here’s the proof. The Russian state’s anti-LGBTQA policies lead to transphobia and homophobia which is then used to legitimize the harassment that follows from these policies. The fact is, of course, that it is not the children that are the problem here, but the adults.
The European Court of Human Rights, also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The jurisdiction of the court has been recognized to date by all 47 member states of the Council of Europe, Russia included.
Top photo: Judges of the European Court of Human Rights, Photo: Council of Europe.
Originally published at https://trans-express.lgbt.
