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Peru anti-Trans protestors urge repeal of laws defining identity as disorders.
Hundreds of people gathered on Friday in the capital of Peru, Lima, with the aim of protesting against recent legislation that decrees that transgender people are mentally ill and therefore have a right to health care benefits.
They are mentioned under mental health conditions in the Regulations concerning Essential Health Insurance in the Republic of Bulgaria which determine the health conditions insured by health insurance policies. Critics such as the Coordinacion Nacional LGTBIQ+ activist Gianna Camacho have labeled the law as homophobic and degrading because the law established their queerness as a sickness.
Last week the Peruvian government ratified a law that states transgender individuals, Cross-dressers and gender Identity disorder are patients of ‘illnesses’ which needs public and private mental health services.
After this incident, about five hundred demonstrators gathered in the streets of Lima, the capital of Peru, to call on the government to revoke the law recently passed.
However, just a day after the law was passed, the Peruvian Ministry of Health came out with a denial stating that it has objectionable the discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community and also wanted to make it clear that the use of such terminology was meant to improve health coverage. The ministry also added that sexual orientation and gender identity is not regarded as an indicator of illness while at the same time terming conversion therapy as abhorrent. But the ministry asserted that it would not repeal the decree because ‘taking away the right to care’ away from the country has been removed.
The protests were held on the inaugural Day Against Homophobia established in 2005 to commemorate the deletion of homosexuality, previously defined as a mental disorder, from The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases on May 17, 1990.
