Joanne Cassar Taking Trans Marriage Fight To ECHR

Malta's Joanne Cassar recently lost a round in her fight for her marriage rights, but is going to continue that battle by taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights.

“I’m not inferior to other women… They can invent a million type of partnerships. I want the right to marry... I am a woman and want the rights that come with it.”

The 29 year old Cassar has been fighting this protracted legal battle over her marriage rights since September 2006.   Having exhausted all of her legal options in Malta to resolve the case, Cassar and her attorneys David Camilleri and Jose Herrera will open a case in the European Court of Human Rights.  Malta is a signatory to the treaty that established the ECHR, and whatever decision it makes in this case is binding.

She admitted in a May 25 Times of Malta interview that she was initially disappointed by the adverse ruling. "I was in a bad state at first but then I picked myself up as I realised I had always been willing to take the case to Europe. I always knew it would end there."   

“Like any other woman I feel the best thing in life is getting married and having a family. And don’t bring children into the argument... For me marriage is not only about having children. You marry a man because you love him,” she said adding that hopefully, one day, she would get to wear a white dress."

She is a woman who has human rights that were violated, and hopefully the European Court of Human Rights judges will be far wiser than the ones in her homeland in seeing that.

Eurovision 2011 Grand Final Tonight-Dana's Not In it

Was hoping that Dana International would at least end up in the Grand Final for the 2011 Eurovision song competition in Dusseldorf, but when the smoke cleared and the votes were tallied in the second semi final she failed to make it.

She was repping Israel once again and bidding to become the first person ever to win the event twice, but looks like no one was feeling her song entitled 'Ding Dong'.

Well, maybe next time.

Good Luck At Eurovision 2011 Dana International!

Israeli transwoman Dana International's quest to become the first two time winner of the Eurovision Song Contest takes center stage in a few hours when she sings 'Ding Dong' during the second semi final round in Düsseldorf, Germany..

Nineteen contestants already performed in the first semi final round on May 10, with ten of them already through to the May 14 Grand Final.    Dana will have to get voted into the top ten of this second semi final in order to have a shot at making Eurovision history.

She won this event in 1999, so I'm interested in seeing what Jean Paul Gauthier gown she's going to wear for this year.

Good luck, Dana.

She's Baaack! Dana International Headed To Eurovision 2011

The multinational Eurovision song contest is the world's most watched non sporting television event, averaging over 120 million viewers annually.    It launched the careers of ABBA (1974), Celine Dion (who competed for Switzerland in 1988), Katrina and the Waves (1997), several eastern European music stars and a transsexual singer from Israel named Sharon Cohen.

She's better known by her stage name of Dana International.   When she won the Israeli K'dam Eurovision selection contest after finishing second in 1995, drama was stirred up by Israel's Orthodox Jewish community and Israeli conservatives who had a problem with a transperson representing the nation at Eurovision 1998.    They attempted to strip her of the title but failed. 


She got the last laugh on her transphobic Israeli critics when her song 'Diva' won, subsequently sold over 400,000 copies and hit the Top Ten on the music charts of five European countries. .

She also slammed her critics back home with her 'Message of Reconciliation' in the wake of her 1998 Eurovision win. "My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don't believe in God, and I am part of the Jewish Nation." 


Now Dana International is headed back to the Eurovision event not as a former champion or guest, but as a repeat contestant. She won Israel's K'dam 2011 selection contest and is headed to Düsseldorf  with one called 'Ding Dong'.

Seriously, that's the name of the song.




We'll also have to see not only what Jean Paul Gauthier gown she pulls out for this Eurovision event this May, can she make Eurovision history by being the first person ever to win it twice?.

Carla Antonelli About To Break Ground Again

Spanish transwoman and actress Carla Antonelli has long been a trailblazing activist and champion for our people in her homeland.

She pushed for the changes in Spanish law that allowed transpeople to change their identity documents, even going as far as undergoing a hunger strike to get it done.

She was also the first person in Spain to ask for a change of name and sex on her identity documents.


Carla has been retired from TBLG and national politics since 2007, but is about to take another step back into the political arena.

Tomas Gomez, the Socialist Party leader in Madrid has announced that Antonelli will stand as a party candidate for the upcoming May 22 Madrid regional parliamentary elections.

"As a woman and as a politician I am interested by all subjects, unemployment, health and all the needs and concerns of the Madrileños.".

If she wins she would become the first transperson elected to a regional parliamentary seat in Spain.

Good luck, Carla!.

Malta AG Files Appeal In Joanne Cassar Case

I wrote earlier this month about Joanne Cassar, who has been embroiled in legal wrangling on Malta since 2006 over her right to marry.   She just came away with a landmark case win that affirms her right as a transwoman to marry a man and spurred the Maltese Parliament to consider legislation that would make it easier for Maltese transpeople to administratively change identity documents .

Now that legal win is unfortunately being challenged.    According to the Times of Malta, Malta's attorney general has filed an appeal in the case, something that Ms. Cassar feared would happen.    

“When I heard the judge (Pace) read out the judgment I couldn’t believe it... I wanted to phone everyone I knew.   I started from my mother and father,” Ms Cassar said with a surprising look of sadness in her eyes. “All this forces me to remember the hardships I had to endure to achieve what is mine by right.”

Malta's Labour Party said it was disappointed by the decision of the Attorney General and the Marriage Registrar to appeal a decision which had granted a transsexual - Joanne Cassar - the right to marry a man after gender-reassignment surgery.

Spokesman Gino Cauchi said that Justice Ray Pace had rightly decided that a person whose gender reassignment had been recognized by the state and had her official documents changed, should enjoy the civil rights which such a change brought about.

Alternattiva Demokratika also expressed disappointment with the Malta Attorney General's appeal.
" A democratic and responsible government should always protect civil liberties without excluding any minority." said AD chairman Michael Briguglio. 'The constitutional court had rightly based its judgement on the charter of fundamental rights of the EU. Yet, once again, the confessional ideology of state institutions is rearing its ugly head. This only calls for more solidarity with the LGBT movement in order that Malta would stop acting like the crib of the Europe'.

 In case you're wondering what the European Court's stance is on this issue, it has declared:
“…that a test of congruent biological factors can no longer be decisive in denying legal recognition to the change of gender of a post-operative transsexual. There are other important factors – the acceptance of the condition of gender identity disorder by the medical professions and health authorities within Contracting States, the provision of treatment including surgery to assimilate the individual as closely as possible to the gender in which they perceive that they properly belong and the assumption by the transsexual of the social role of the assigned gender.”

Ms. Cassar's attorneys have already filed a response to the AG's appeal of the Pace ruling.
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But sadly, Joanne Cassar is going to have to fight another protracted legal battle for her right to get married, something the European Court of Human Rights has already said she can.do.