More Good News from Ireland

Shaker Insomniax emails, which I am sharing with his permission:

So today Ireland had another massive breakthrough in terms of LGBT rights and I can't help but feel the success and momentum of the marriage equality referendum has helped enormously. This has been a long uphill battle for trans* folks with the struggle for gender recognition being largely ignored and unseen in comparison to the referendum.

In fact, on the day of the marriage equality referendum in Ireland I got messages of support from my family congratulating me, asking when I would now finally set the date with my partner and I had to tell them that I, as the man I am and have fought to be recognized as, still couldn't get married until the state changed my birth certificate. It was a weirdly crushing microagression on what was otherwise a massive celebration for me on May 23rd. (We won't get into the weirdness of the assumption I would of course totes be getting married.)

But today the government announced that Gender Recognition legislation will be put into law as soon as July and most importantly that the medical criteria would be removed and that trans* people will be granted the right to self determine their gender on their birth certificates. While the legislation still fails to cater to people under 16 and doesn't make explicit provisions for non-binary people, this is a huge huge step. We've also secured a review process in two years and are hopeful we can push for these additional provisions then.

Yayayayay! I think we need to see that picture of a double rainbow over Dublin again.


Photo by Karl.