Same-sex marriage is spreading. | Photo: Pixabay
A Singapore married couple will go to the High Court after their marriage the Registrar revoked when one of them transitioned.
Faith and Bryce Volta registered their intent to marry at the Registry of Marriages (ROM) in 2015. Bryce identifies as female.
At the time Faith registered as a male on official documents and according to reports promised not to transition before the wedding.
In Singapore a person must have surgery in order to be recognized as their true gender. They may update the gender on their national ID cards, but not on their birth certificates.
Same-sex marriage and homosexual acts are illegal in Singapore. But trans people whose national IDs reflect their true gender may marry someone of the opposite sex.
Bryce and Faith
The ROM solemnized the Volta’s wedding in 2015 and in March 2016, Faith had the gender affirming surgery. She received a new national ID card a few months later.
But six months after that the Registrar revoked their marriage licence. It used the Women’s Charter law as a reason to void the marriage according to the Straits Times.
The law says that a marriage ‘solemnized in Singapore or elsewhere between a person who has undergone a sex reassignment procedure and any person of the opposite sex is and shall be deemed always to have been a valid marriage’.
But it also says ‘the sex of any party to a marriage as stated at the time of the marriage in his or her identity card issued’.
The Voltas won the first battle in the High Court in January. Justice Valerie Thean gave them permission to apply for an order to fight the Registrar’s decision.
They will now go to a full judicial review hearing, and pre-trial arguments for the case began last week.
