A new law passed by the German parliament earlier this month will make it illegal to reveal the biological sex or original name of a person who claims to have changed gender or sex.
The penalty for the intentional and harmful disclosure of a person’s real sex and prior name without their consent is a fine of up to €10,000, and while there are exemptions for police investigations and court proceedings, the law also applies to family members.
The Self-Identification Act passed 374 to 251 on April 12 with the support of Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s coalition and the far-left , and allows Germans to modify their gender on legal documents. It will come into effect on November 1.
Adults will be able to choose whether they are male, female or “diverse”, while 14 to 18-year-olds will need parental consent to do so – but the law allows the state to overrule the wishes of parents or guardians if a court rules it is in the “best interests” of a child, Reduxx reported.
Those under 14 will need their parents to make the changes on their behalf, meaning parents can change the recorded sex of their babies from birth, and it will be illegal to disclose that information without their permission.
Changes cannot be reversed for a year, and a national defence emergency will freeze applications from male to female or diverse made less than two months prior.
Two male Green Party representatives, Markus Ganserer and Nyke Slawik, who both claim to be female, applauded the passing of the bill.
“As trans people, we experience time and again that our dignity is made a matter of negotiation,” Mr Slawik told parliament. He has claimed to be a woman since he was 16 years old.
“It is about time that we put an end to the unnecessarily long expert opinions and court proceedings to change names as an injustice, and that we finally respect the dignity of trans, intersex, and non-binary people today.”
Mr Ganserer said on social media: “This is an incredibly important historic decision and that’s why it really takes a load off my mind that after so many years of hard work and so many years of waiting, I will also receive official ID documents in the future that will have my real name on them.”
Now calling himself Tessa, Mr Ganserer is still legally a male but admits using women’s saunas, and has stated that “a penis is not a male sexual organ”.
LGBTQ+ Commissioner Sven Lehmann, who previously confessed to using homosexual hook-up app Grindr during meetings in parliament, and led a taxpayer-funded youth project that promoted BDSM and “age fetishes” for minors, said the new law would put an end to “40 years of suffering”.
The laws were opposed by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and women’s rights groups, with concerns criminal will exploit the system to change identities and it would lead to upheaval in families.
Anti-gender ideology campaigner Rona Duwe, who was last year warned by a court not to compare a trans rights group’s symbol to one used by paedophiles, told Reduxx she was targeted by aggressive transgender extremists while protesting the bill.
“We are afraid that the police, state and judicial persecution against feminists will increase,” she said.
