A Kuwaiti court has ruled that a 25-year-old male-to-female transsexual can be officially regarded as a woman, according to this BBC report which comes courtesy of Gay Middle East.
According to the report:
Lawyer Adel al-Yahya told Reuters news agency the judges were guided by a religious edict allowing gender change if there are medical reasons for it.
The ruling has to be approved by a higher court before it becomes final.
Mr Yahya, the plaintiff's lawyer, said he presented the court with an edict from Sunni Islam's top religious institution, al-Azhar, in Egypt.
This allows people to change their gender if there are proper medical reasons for doing so.
"We have evidence, a fatwa from al-Azhar, because we have a case of illness, not a case of switching gender or as they call it in Kuwait a third-sex case," he told Reuters.
What tipped the balance for the court, apparently, was the finding of "hormonal imbalances" (simply living a life of torment would not, by itself, have sufficed). Apparently the Kuwaiti court shares the widespread apprehension that there are millions of people out there who might decide to change gender on a whim or as part of some kind of fad. Perhaps the plaintiff is eager to relinquish his/her right to vote - since Kuwaiti women were officially denied that right, once again, by the National Assembly.
