Kuwait court overturns law criminalizing transgender people

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait’s constitutional court has struck down a contentious law long used to criminalize transgender people by forbidding the “imitation of the opposite sex.” After weeks of deliberation and years of campaigning by human rights groups, the court ruled that the vague law policing people who dress and behave like the opposite sex was “inconsistent with the constitution’s keenness to ensure and preserve personal freedom.” The decision was hailed as a liberal counterweight to the conservative politics currently sweeping Kuwait, a Gulf Arab sheikhdom where homosexual relations are criminalized with up to seven years in prison.