"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" wondered Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

* "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" wondered Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Britain's parliament has been pondering the same issue, and has come to the conclusion that not only can a woman be as like a man as she pleases, she can actually be a man if she wants to, and a man can be a woman, too. It requires a certificate from a compliant doctor to prove that the person so inclined is suffering from "gender dysphoria," but aside from this minor inconvenience, nothing else is necessary. In particular, no surgery is necessary. If you are biologically a man, but think you are a woman--well, then you can be a woman in law; and vice, of course, versa. This is the essence of the Gender Recognition Bill, which passed the House of Lords on February 10, after intensive lobbying by groups favoring "transsexual rights." In Britain, after the bill is signed into law, a clergyman might find that the apparent man and apparent woman he has married are, in fact, two men, or two women, in all physical respects. Not only could he not do anything about this after the fact; if he disclosed his findings to another clergyman, he would break the law and be subject to a heavy fine! This is a step beyond homosexual marriage, toward a state of society in which all distinctions between male and female have been purged from the laws. Possibly Professor Higgins would have approved; but a system of laws that departs so far from the plain realities of human nature will almost certainly prove unsustainable, and inimical to liberty.