Call to Change British Monarchy Succession Law

Deputy British PM, Nick Clegg, says the law that prevent a first-born royal female child from taking the throne ahead of a younger male child are “old-fashioned”. Actually, it’s sex-based discrimination. Suddenly, two weeks before the wedding of Prince William, heir to the heir to the British monarch, this is a hot topic.  Two attempts in the British Parliament, in 2005 and 2009, to make this change both failed.  A similar proposal in Denmark lapsed when Frederick and Mary’s first child was male.  WfaAR points out that changing the gender rules on succession will not remove other discriminatory features of the British monarchy such as the fact that the king or queen cannot be married to a Catholic set out in the 1701 Act of Settlement.  Making this particular change will not make having the British monarch as Australia’s head of state in a constitutional monarchy more acceptable in anything but the most marginal sense.  The same reasoning applies to having a female Governor-General as we do now.