Japan - Bill to ease gender variant persons' sex registration

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Friday, April 25, 2008

Bill OK'd by LDP to ease sex registration

Kyodo News

A Liberal Democratic Party panel approved a bill Thursday that would 

enable parents with gender identity disorder to change their 

officially registered sex if their children have reached adulthood.

Currently, only adults with gender disorder who have no children can 

alter their sex in their family registries.

The action on the part of the LDP's judicial affairs committee is in 

response to demands from parents with the disorder.

The main opposition force, the Democratic Party of Japan, plans to go 

further, proposing that any parents with the disorder —  regardless of 

whether their children have attained adulthood — be allowed to  change 

their registered sex.

The LDP and DPJ will try to narrow their differences over the proposed 

revision so that bipartisan legislation can be submitted while the 

Diet is in session.

The current gender-change law went into force in July 2004.

Proponents say the revision to the law would provide an impetus to 

society to accept a biological male becoming "a mother" and a 

biological female becoming "a father."

The current law made it through the Diet with broad backing from the 

various political parties. The aim was to help remove social obstacles 

that people with the disorder face in everyday life, such as 

employment, voting and overseas travel, due to differences between the 

identity under which they live and the sex listed in their official 

documents.

The law allows people to change their sex registration if at least two 

doctors have identified them as having a psychological makeup 

different than their biological sex and a desire to live as the 

opposite sex both physically and socially.

But the law says applicants, in addition to having no children, must 

be 20 or older, unmarried and no longer have functioning reproductive 

organs as a result of undergoing a sex-change operation.

--

â“’The Japan Times Ltd.