Lebanon allows transgender woman to change gender record

A Lebanese judge has allowed a transgender woman to update her personal status record and change her gender, in a rare legal move in Lebanon.

Judge Wassim Zahreddine said he based the ruling on a 2016 decision by Beirut's court of appeals that said a transgender man had the right to change his name and gender on his legal records.

Zahreddine said Lebanese law allows official documents to be changed by a judge to represent a person's reality. He said the ruling may still be appealed.

The decision was filed in April, six years after the woman filed her request. Zahreddine said fear of a backlash meant it was published only in July in a Lebanese judicial magazine, with the woman's approval.

Zahreddine said the woman obtained a medical report in Thailand in 2019 proving that she had gender dysphoria and underwent gender-affirming surgery. She filed in Lebanon in 2020 to have her legal status correspond with her physical and behavioural status.

The judge said the woman faced questions at security checkpoints because her identity document listed her as male while she was a woman, and that having to repeatedly explain her case breached her right to privacy.

Zahreddine said some clerics had criticised the decision. He said legal gender change remained “within restrictions” because gender-change surgery was not easy financially or medically.

Lebanon's LGBTQ community has long been visible and outspoken, but LGBTQ issues remain highly taboo. A vaguely worded law punishing “unnatural” sexual relations has been used to clamp down on the community.