Thankyou,
I'll try to make it easy, you have to give a reason why you were discriminated against. You can't just plead discrimination. This applies to hospital treatment employment, if someone refuses you a service because your black thats racial discrimnination if someone refuses you a service because your a transsexual thats discrimination based on gender. God knows what it would come under if you were refused emergency treatment in the A&E because you were wearing red shoes and your handbag did'nt match, but sure there must be something that would cover it.
Same way you can't just prosecute somone for stealing something different types of theft, you have to give factual evidence of what they stole and how they stole it.
burglary, robbery, fraud, taking pecuniary advantage, embezzlement. Armed robbery. larcency, blackmail is a form of stealing so is extortion. All different crimes with varying penalties. You can't just prosecute someone for killing someone, There is murder, an other degrees of murder right down to causing death by driving without due care and attention. When our laws were first written, They were secular and a disadvantage to the masses. gradually as society changed, laws were added and amendments made to make them fairer and all encompassing. Thats why we in the UK probably have the best laws anywhere in the world relating to Transsgender issues. To say it gets complicated and leaves too many loopholes is wrong, Many changes to statutes and common law, is to close the loopholes, as in the case of the artificial vagina a classic example of closing a get out.clause.
Some of the aspects of USA law, I quite admire, wish we could adopt them here, especially when it comes to handing down sentences. Very often here
if a person commits 5 robberies, the get say 3 years for each of the five robberies, they then get sentenced to do their sentences concurrent which means they serve their imprisionment with all sentences running together, ergo they only do 3 years less time off for good behaviour. Whereas in the USA, they tend to do 3 years for the first crime and then when thats finished they start doing the time for the next crime and so on. consecutive. The only real gripe I have with the human rights act in the UK is very often it favours the perp more than the victim.
Someone once said the law is an ass, only if its being read and interpretated by donkeys.
I might be wrong, I realy have no great knowledge of USA law. except from television, if your arrested on criminal charges you have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to represent you. When it comers to things like discrimination, being refused goods or a service one has to hire a lawyer. so under those circumstances, the poor people are disadvantaged. I have heard a couple of American girls and girls from Canada, declare in the chat room that when they came out they lost their jobs and some could not afford to pursue their claims under state law, because they could not afford to pay for the lawyers. Here the Ideology of common law is that, within the terms of the law everyone is equal regardless of their position in society or their ability to pay for legal representation, thats one reason that we have so many laws.. Somone refuses to to serve a TS in a shop because they are a TS or on the basis of race, etc etc , its a crime, punishable by law. One has recourse to the law, its not a case of if you can afford it you get it, you can't afford it tough luck. Not being in the position to know a great deal about US or Canadian law, I certainly don't want to get into a you versus us scenario, try not to form opinions lessening the value we place on our legal system. There is of course the requirement for a forum dealing with USA laws, so far nobody has volountered to head up such a forum.
I have hidden two posts, I have not consulted Katie or any of the other mods. I am the last one to censor anyones opinion. But this forum is not going to be dragged into a us and them situation. I realy am interested in how laws work in other countries, sure we all have positive things to add, its basically a UK law forum, but I am grateful to get comments and explanations how the laws differ from country to country. But I will not let this forum descend into chaos by anyone, when people start being so base as to call somone else a boy then it makes me wonder why I am devoting my time to trying to help people.. I thought perhaps by highlighting some of our laws regarding transgendered issues it would keep people in the UK informed of their rights and perhaps give people from other countries a basis for repealing some of their own laws that did'nt quite come up to scratch.