}

Friday, December 15, 2006

World’s first tranny MP to retire

Georgina Beyer, the world’s first transgendered person elected to a national legislature, will step down as a member of the New Zealand Parliament in February, according to the New Zealand Herald and stuff website. The former mayor of Carterton was first elected to Parliament in 1999. She’s the second Labour MP to leave Parliament as the party seeks to freshen its caucus in the lead-up to next year’s Parliamentary elections.

With Beyer’s departure, Parliament will have no transgendered MPs. The Labour caucus has three openly gay men and one lesbian. Together with Beyer, they were known as “Rainbow Labour”. The opposition National Party has one openly gay member of Parliament.

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