Denmark to criminalise hate speech against trans people

The Danish government wants to add new terms to the country’s hate speech laws to protect trans people from discrimination.

The Social Democratic minority government plans to add the terms gender identity (kønsidentitet), gender expression (kønsudtryk) and sex characteristics (kønskarakteristika) to section 266b of the criminal law code – commonly known as the ‘Racism Paragraph’.

Newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, which was first to report the proposed law change, writes that it would be made with the intention of preventing hate speech against trans people.

The law change would mean that hate speech against trans and intersexual people would be treated as a crime on the same basis as all homophobic and racist speech.

The proposal is supported by left wing parties the Red Green Alliance and Socialist People’s Party, with the Social Liberal party also in support in principle. As such, it has a theoretical parliamentary majority in support. Read more via The Local