German Cabinet Discusses Law Allowing For Easier Gender, Name Changes
Germany’s Cabinet is set to find an agreement on a draft law on Wednesday that would make it easier for people to legally change their name and gender.
At the moment, changing one’s gender required expert assessments and a court decision.
The law was aimed at transgender, intersex and non-binary people, the Family and Justice Ministries said.
It had been criticised by conservative parties and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Many trans people found the current transsexual law humiliating, as it stipulated that people might only officially change their first name and gender after a psychological assessment and a court decision.
They often had to put up with very intimate questions.
According to the draft law, the definition of a trans person is someone who does not identify or does not identify only with the gender they were assigned at birth.
People who were intersex had congenital physical characteristics “that cannot be clearly classified as (only) male or (only) female according to medical standards,’’ it said.
The term non-binary is defined as a self-designation for people who did not identify as male or female, the draft law states.
The Cabinet also planned to decide on Wednesday on a bill by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to lower barriers for obtaining German citizenship.
In principle, immigrants should be able to obtain a German passport more quickly, though there were conditions on economic and democratic integration.
The draft, that was obtained, explicitly excluded naturalisation for people who had committed crimes for anti-Semitic or racist reasons.
