G is for Gay (LGBTQ) rights

pride march 2013

This winter, Der Kreis was released in theaters and I bawled like a baby.

It was a documentary film about Zürich's Harvey Milks, so to speak. You see, after World War II, homosexuality was illegal in many western European countries, but not Switzerland, which became like a Mecca for homosexuals. They came from all around at the weekend and lived and loved freely (more or less). That is until a serial murderer (rent boy) began killing homosexual men and the powers that be began to push for the registration of homosexuals in Switzerland (for their safety). Watch the film, it's horrific, but it has a happy ending because civil partnerships! (Since 2005)

So from 1942, homosexual acts were legal in Switzerland, though the age of consent was higher than for heterosexuals: 20 instead of 16 until 1990.  Anti-discrimination laws for homosexuals in the work place were only passed in 1999. (But there's always been equal protection under the law for homosexual prostitution as heterosexual prostitution.

Here in Switzerland, we all get united in a civil way at or by a member of city hall and then those who choose to can go to a church and do a wedding ceremony if they like. (There's not a justice of the peace, but someone who's sole job is to register partnerships.) Up until 2015 there was still a linguistic difference between hetero- and homosexual partnerships. But that changed this February. 

Though civil partnerships have been legal here since the early 2000s adoption remains a hot button issue. (If we're honest, adoption for single folk and straight folk is a bit kooky here to begin with.) But as of 2014, partner adoption in homosexual couples is legal. 

So homosexuals no longer need to be registered by orientation, but we're all registered one way or another here. Here, since 2012, citizens can change their gender officially and legally without any sort of sterilization.