A VALE vicar has admitted he could unknowingly have performed wedding ceremonies involving transsexuals - marriages that would be illegal.

The Rev Barry Collins, vicar of St Peter's Church, Bengeworth entered the debate over the legal status of transsexuals in the wake of a recent European Court ruling.

As a result of the decision, English law will have to be altered to enable birth certificates to be amended so the confidentiality of anyone who has undergone a sex change can be protected.

Writing in his church's parish magazine, Mr Collins said: "It will be interesting to see how this debate goes.

"In fact, I am not now required to see a birth certificate before I conduct someone's wedding, so I may have married someone who is a transsexual already. Their marriage would be illegal but I would not know that."

He added that the European Court ruling could have implications for the Church of England.

"If the church objected to such marriages in the future, then it would, presumably, have to negotiate some kind of legal opt-out clause, by which the priest could require someone wishing to be married in church to reveal whether their birth certificate had ever been altered," he explained.

"I can't imagine that this would be easily granted. I certainly hope it wouldn't."

Mr Collins said it had taken 40 years for the church to come to terms with the issue of divorcees who wanted to remarry in church.

As far as transsexuals' changing legal status was concerned, he said: "It would be nice if, for once, the church and Christians could, wholeheartedly, rejoice that a group of people have, at last, got the justice they deserve and if it could arrange for it to take rather less than four agonising decades to allow those, who wish it, to express and empower their commitment to each other in ways which many of us take for granted."