Monday, February 20, 2012

A Welcome Change of Heart

In two previous posts (Stop Forced Sterilization and A Message from Love) I have informed you about the deadlock among the four parties that form the Swedish government on the issue of forced sterilization of transsexuals before being granted permission for new legal gender identity and gender corrective surgery. 

Although three of the four parties in the governing so called "Alliance for Sweden" and 90 % of the members of parliament as a whole were for a change of the law and abolish the requirement for sterilization the fourth party in the Alliance, the Swedish Christian Democrats, blocked any change of the present law.

The Christian Democrats is a socially conservative ("family values", i.e. anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti stem-cell research etc etc.) party heavily influenced by the "Word of Faith" movement and other fundamentalist Christian movements. 

Recently internal strife broke out where the party chairman Göran Hägglund was challenged for the leadership of the party by a candidate for the hardcore fundamentalists. The rebellion was successfully quenched by a humiliating defeat after which the party leadership - finally - grew a pair of brand new "cojones" and on Saturday declared that the party would no longer oppose abolishing the requirement of forced sterilization.

We can now look forward to a change of the anachronistic and discriminatory law.

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