https://reduxx.info/canada-trans-activists-claim-law-preventing-sex-offenders-from-obtaining-legal-name-changes-is-transphobic/

Trans activists in British Columbia, Canada, are demanding that a law which prevents dangerous convicted criminals from changing their legal names be repealed immediately.

Social justice legal group West Coast LEAF issued a press release, signed by numerous trans activist groups and organizations, demanding the change on November 7. In their letter, the groups claim that the province’s legislation “harms those most in need of legal name changes, including transgender people, Indigenous people, and survivors of gender-based violence.”

The legislation at issue is the province’s Name Act, which was amended earlier this year in response to public outcry over child-killer Allan Schoenborn being permitted to change his legal name, followed by a failed campaign to keep his new name hidden from the public.

Schoenborn murdered his three children, aged five, eight, and 10, in 2008. While he was found guilty of first-degree, pre-meditated murder, a judge ruled he was not criminally responsible due to mental illness. Schoenborn is currently eligible for 28-day leaves from the forensics hospital where he is serving his sentence, and may eventually be released into transitional housing in the community. Schoenborn does not identify as transgender.

Adrienne Smith, a female lawyer who uses they/them pronouns, also signed on to West Coast LEAF’s demands to reverse changes to the Name Act. In a statement included in their press release, Smith wrote that, for trans-identified persons, “[o]ur chosen names are human rights… This change [to the Name Act] hurts people standing farthest from justice, because it essentially sentences trans people to permanent deadnaming. That is unlawful, and it is wrong. Everyone should be entitled to the basic dignity of a name.”