Manila: The Philippine Supreme Court has rejected a bid by a man who had a sex change operation to change his records to reflect the fact that he is now a woman, court officials said today.

The court ruled there was no law to allow Rommel Jacinto Dantes Silverio to change his civil registry record. Silverio underwent sex change surgery in Thailand in 2001 and sought to change his first name to "Mely" and to amend his gender to "female" so that he could marry his boyfriend.

"While the petitioner may have succeeded in altering his body and appearance through the intervention of modern surgery, no law authorises the change of entry as to sex in the civil registry for that reason," read the Supreme Court ruling, released today. "There is no special law in the country governing sex reassignment and its effect," it added.

The court said it recognised that "there are people whose preferences and orientation do not fit neatly into the commonly recognised parameters of social convention and that, at least for them, life is indeed an ordeal."

Source : PTI