Laws concerning gender identity-expression by country or territory
Legal identity change
Legal identity change, surgery required
No legal identity change
Unknown/Ambiguous
The legal status of transgender people varies significantly around the world. Some countries have enacted laws protecting the rights of transgender individuals, but others have criminalized their gender identity or expression. In many cases, transgender individuals face discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, and other areas of life. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is not consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth and also with the gender role that is associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establish, a new gender status that accords with their gender identity. Transsexual is generally considered a subset of transgender, but some transsexual people reject being labelled transgender.
Globally, most legal jurisdictions recognize the two traditional gender identities and social roles, man and woman, but tend to exclude any other gender identities and expressions. People assigned male at birth are usually legally recognized as men, and people assigned female at birth are usually legally recognized as women, in jurisdictions that distinguish between the two; however, there are some countries which recognize, by law, a third gender. That third gender is often associated with being nonbinary. There is now a greater understanding of the breadth of variation outside the typical categories of "man" and "woman", and many self-descriptions are now entering the literature, including pangender, genderqueer, polygender, and agender. Medically and socially, the term "transsexualism" is being replaced with gender incongruence, or gender dysphoria, and terms such as transgender people, trans men, and trans women, and non-binary are replacing the category of transsexual people. (Full article...)
Prior to becoming president, Rinkēvičs had represented Latvian Way, Reform Party, and the Unity party since May 2014. He left Unity after being elected president as it is customarily expected in Latvia for presidents to maintain political neutrality. (Full article...)
Being gay is a natural normal beautiful variation on being human. Period. End of subject. Therefore, any argument which says differently is an immoral supremacist one. Call it out as such. ... Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving or unnatural for being just as you are.
If your marriage needs protecting you need a therapist not an amendment
Credit: Originally from Flickr (Flickr user: stevebott)
T-shirt reading "If your marriage needs protecting you need a therapist not an amendment", at a demonstration following the upholding of California Proposition 8 (2008) in Strauss v. Horton. Image: 30 May 2009, Fresno, California, USA
... that The Pittsburgh Courier crusaded against the blue discharge, calling it "a vicious instrument that should not be perpetrated against the American Soldier"?
...that Nireah Johnson was murdered by Paul Moore after Moore discovered Johnson was transgender?
... that Freeheld is an Academy Award winning documentary by Cynthia Wade that follows a New Jersey detective fighting for the right to pass on her pension to her female domestic partner?