But surely no one is naive enough to think that the government will meddle with such an important piece of legislation based on a petition of an arbitrary 100,000? The petition has forced the government to make it clear how it views the equality act so I think it's already been much more successful than any other petition I can recall in recent years.
And again even if the amendment was made it would still require court decisions to be certain it achieves what the proposers want it to achieve.
We need court cases that require judges to set precedents, then we can know if the wording needs changing. My own view is given the government's response to this petition and the guidance from the Equality bods when a new case goes to court the judges will take note of that and a change of sex even with a GRC will not override the right to single sex segregation based on biological/natal sex in certain circumstances.
I view the petition as just one piece of the jigsaw.
In the time it's been running, there's been the veto on the Scottish GRR bill, then the controversy over trans women rapists in women's prisons, followed by new guidance from the government excluding trans women convicted of violent offences from prisons in England and Wales. There have been several exchanges in Parliament, following the veto of the Scottish GRR bill. Several more major organisations including some universities have left the Stonewall Champions scheme.
Current practice in how the EA is *applied* and how this relates to other statutory issues such as relationships education continues to cause unrest and controversy. The government has made noises about some of this, so likely more guidance will follow for schools, etc.
Forcing another debate in Parliament if the petition crosses 100K might not achieve much, since they can end up being debated by two men and a dog in the middle of the night, but along with opinion polling, a successful (100K-threshold-passing) petition puts politicians on notice that people do care about an issue. Opinion polling is substantially against substituting gender identity for sex in many areas of life, certainly in where trans prisoners should be housed. This is backed up by the practical experiences of implementing more inclusive policies, so the prisons service in England and Wales had substantially withdrawn from uncritical affirmation, with declining numbers of trans women housed in women's prisons. That in turn makes it less likely that future convicts will resort to Prison Onset Gender Dysphoria if they know it's not going to work - if violent offenders are *never* housed with women prisoners, a boundary has been drawn, and those who thrill from transgressing boundaries can't get their kicks.
The interpretation of the EA put about by trans allies tends to erase sex and replace it with gender, and this has spread through many public services: the NHS, schools, police forces. The EA as written and as interpreted by many lawyers does not permit such a coach-and-horses approach. That can be addressed in a few ways: in actual court cases when the application of the EA is challenged and tested (in either direction), and by guidance, both to courts as well as to public services.
The open letter this week signed by over 1000 NHS doctors and nurses asking the NHS to stop erasing women from its language and advertising might end up being more effective than a generalised petition, since if experts disagree with official language this should indeed weigh more. But a broader petition reinforces such efforts, as does opinion polling and media coverage.
