Japan Begins Banning The Outing Of LGBT+ People
Mie has joined the city of Kunitachi, becoming the second region in Japan to ban the outing of LGBT+ people without their permission under a new anti-discrimination law. The new law will also ban individuals from forcing members of the LGBT+ community to come out.
Speaking on the impact of outing a person, Governor of Mie prefecture, Eikei Suzuki identified how this act “can destabilize family and working relationships and drive people into isolation by disrupting their friendships and contact with other people. We need to do more to create a society that cares for each other.”
According to ‘GCN', in April 2018, the city of Kunitachi became the first prefecture to introduce a similar ban on outing LGBT+ people. A lawyer in the Tokyo office of the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer law firm and a member of the Lawyers for LGBT Alliance Network Alexander Dmitrenko, said in a statement that “Japan is still lagging behind most of its Western peers in basic LGBT+ education. There are also no LGBT+ community centres, the types we are used to seeing in major Western cities. Therefore, Japanese LGBT+ individuals can struggle with coming out alone.”
The latest ban has received widespread support from the public, with one person stating online that “This country should work for a future where any love is recognized.”
Penalties have yet to be settled upon by legislators, but it has been expected that these measures will be drafted after a conference of experts deliberate on the matter.
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