A poll has revealed that 66 per cent of Spaniards want to set limits to the proposed “Trans Law” which would allow minors from the age of 16 to legally change their gender by a simple request.
The survey, which was conducted by the research company Sigma, claims that 66 per cent of the Spanish public wants some sort of limits on the ability of children to change their gender legally before they reach the age of 18.
The results also found that issues surrounding children in the proposed “Trans Law” were the most important to Spaniards as the ruling leftist Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party looks to push through the new law, El Mundo reports.
Irene Montero, Spain’s Minister of Equality, has been the driving force behind the new bill and called the legislation “a giant step in LGTBI rights and particularly the rights of trans people,” last year.
Under the new legislation, any child over the age of 16 would be able to legally change their gender by a simple request and without a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria, while those between 14 and 16 can change their gender with their parent or guardian’s permission.
Children under 12, meanwhile, can still change their gender legally but will have to seek the approval of a court in order to do so.
Such rulings have been granted to children recently, including a case in June in which an eight-year-old was granted permission to legally change their gender after determining the child was mature enough to decide following an interview with the child.
The law has been criticised by right-wing parties such as the populist party VOX, whose supporters in the Sigma survey voted 55 per cent to state that they did not think gender could be chosen without taking into account the biological sex of the person involved.
A total of 61.6 per cent of VOX supporters also stated they believed that gender self-determination poses a threat to women.
VOX MP and spokesperson in the Equality Commission, Carla Toscano, expressed her opinion on the Trans Law earlier this month saying it was, “A law that forces us to turn our backs on reality and will penalize those who refuse to do so.”
Toscano went on to claim the law could harm children who may undertake hormonal therapy and that it imposes gender ideology.
Similar sentiments were made earlier this month by the Spanish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, which released a statement claiming the law contains “really worrisome elements of the imposition of queer theory,” adding, “a theory that radically questions the sexual identity of people, in all areas of personal, family and social life, arbitrarily establishing and imposing a single anthropological conception.”
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