Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has passed into law new regulations making it easier for people to change their first name and gender identity in official records.
The reforms, which will take effect on November 1, allow people to make the changes with a simple procedure at government registry offices.
The changes primarily affect transgender, intersex and non-binary people, many of whom have advocated for the reforms.
Trans advocates have complained that the requirements under Germany’s current transsexual law are humiliating, with those seeking a change in their name and gender forced to submit to a psychological assessment and intimate questioning.
“As trans people, we experience time and again that our dignity is made a matter of negotiation,” Green lawmaker Nyke Slawik, herself a transwoman who changed her legal gender under the current law, said on Friday.
“It is difficult to put into words what this law means for people who have waited years for it to be passed,” said Kalle Hümpfner of the advocacy group Bundesverband Trans*.
The vote in the Bundestag was contentious and, at times, highly emotional. It passed on a vote of 374 to 251, with support coming from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition as well as the far-left Die Linke party.
Conservatives from the centre-right CDU/CSU opposition bloc and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), vehemently opposed the change but were outvoted.
Conservative lawmakers have expressed fears that the reform would allow people to change their officially registered gender arbitrarily in the future.
Far-right lawmaker Martin Reichardt of the AfD called the law “ideological nonsense” pushed by “trans extremists.”
Sven Lehmann, who serves as the German government’s commissioner for LGBTQ issues, has called for broad support for the changes ahead of the vote and said the current law “violates human dignity.”
Lehmann told dpa that the law is overdue and that the proposals are relatively simple and broadly popular, “despite a very heated debate and targeted disinformation campaigns.”
The approval of the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, is not required.
