Georgina Beyer, the world’s first openly transgender MP, dies
The world’s first openly transgender parliamentarian died on Monday in New Zealand. The Associated Press reported former MP Georgina Beyer, 65, passed away in hospice care.
Beyer, who the AP said was Māori, was a sex worker and nightclub performer before her election as mayor of Carterton, a town on New Zealand’s North Island, in 1995.
She won a seat in the New Zealand Parliament as a member of the country’s liberal Labour Party in 1999 and remained in office until 2007.
Beyer, among other things, led efforts to decriminalize sex work in New Zealand and to allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions. (The country’s marriage equality law took effect in 2013.) “Georgie was surrounded by her nearest and dearest 24/7 over the past week, she accepted what was happening, was cracking jokes and had a twinkle in her eye, right until the final moment,” wrote her friend Malcolm Vaughan and his husband, Scott Kennedy, in a statement that announced Beyer’s death.
