ABOVE: Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination supporters. Photo via the SASOD’s Facebook.
Guyana officially decriminalized cross-dressing on Aug. 10.
Local media reports indicate lawmakers in the South American country approved a measure to remove cross-dressing from the colonial-era Summary Jurisdiction (Offenses) Act. Guyanese Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who is also the country’s legal affairs minister, supported the bill.
Guyana is a former British colony that borders Venezuela, Suriname and Brazil.
Guyanese authorities in 2009 arrested four transgender women and charged them with cross-dressing under the Summary Jurisdiction (Offenses) Act. The Caribbean Court of Justice in 2018 unanimously struck down the law.
“People don’t know what effect those laws have had on our psyche,” Quincy McEwan, one of the four people who challenged the cross-dressing law, told the Associated Press in June. “We were traumatized every time we prepared to go out as we don’t know if we are going to be arrested and placed in the lockups.”
Guyana’s LGBTQ rights movement in recent years has become more visible, even though consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in their country.
The Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination, a Guyanese LGBTQ rights group, in 2018 held the country’s first-ever Pride parade. Activists continue to lobby Guyanese lawmakers to decriminalize homosexuality.
