UK & Ireland in Brief

Prosecuting lawyers were urged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), in July, not to use biologically-correct pronouns and names for transgender victims, witnesses and defendants.

The new CPS guidance also uses a subjective definition of a ‘hate crime’. The Christian Institute warned that the guidance could require people to lie. CPS said: ‘Prosecutors should address trans victims, witnesses and defendants according to their affirmed gender and name, using that gender and related pronouns in all documentation and in the courtroom.’

Scotland’s Lord Advocate has said that drug consumption rooms are not permissible under current law amid efforts to open one in Glasgow.

The rooms, branded ‘shooting galleries’, let heroin addicts inject themselves without getting arrested. It comes as latest figures reveal Scotland has the worst drug death rates in the Western world. Scottish rapper and social commentator Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey also said addiction is ‘out of control’ there, but nothing is being done about it.

One in 50 male offenders in prisons say they are transgender, according to survey results released in July by the Inspectorate of Prisons.

The report comes amid concerns inmates may be trying to gain advantages or be placed in all-female prisons in order to have access to women. Meanwhile in Scotland, men who say they are women have criticised plans to let people in Scotland ‘self-identify’ as the opposite sex as ‘naïve, misguided and simplistic’.

Married couples will be able to swap their marriage for a civil partnership under new proposals being considered by the government.

Last year the Supreme Court gave its support to the idea that civil partnerships should be available to heterosexual as well as homosexual couples. Ministers revealed in July that they are considering the introduction of a ‘conversion period’, during which married couples may switch to a civil partnership.

Dr David Mackereth told the Daily Mail in July that he is determined to fight a ‘landmark legal case’ after losing his job for refusing to call a trans man a woman.

He said his case is about whether he can legally use pronouns that comply with his Christian convictions. Lawyers at the Christian Legal Centre, who are representing him, say the Department for Work and Pensions discriminated against Dr Mackereth because of his Christian beliefs.

In July, Humanists UK began supporting a legal challenge brought by Oxfordshire parents who want an end to all Christian content in school assemblies.

The parents had exercised their legal right to remove their children from collective worship, which legally must be ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’. Humanists UK appear to want to have their cake and eat it, as they are also campaigning against an opt-out for parents with regard to sex and relationships education.