Today marks one year since the promulgation of the Denton Protocol, an intermicronational agreement that authorised its signatories to refuse to respect the preferred micronational names, titles, and addresses of micronationalists who refused to respect the names, titles, and addresses of transgender micronationalists.
Read the text of the Protocol here.
In other words, the Protocol enabled its signatories to form a front to apply diplomatic pressure to those who refuse to respect the gender identities of transgender micronationalists.
This controversial accord was viewed negatively by those who thought that this action was an imposition of a Sandum will or a Sandum desire — an act of violating other states’ sovereign rights. However, the same people who argued that it was a violation of their freedoms have, in the past, also required that others change the way they are addressed because of cultural reasons, and to take up their preferred names. Those people included the likes of Yaroslav Mar and Bradley of Dullahan, while Josephy Kennedy was a major defender of their rights to do so.
Mar and of Dullahan have both requested that Sandum officials quit addressing them as “Monsieur,” in accordance with Sandum cultural practice; of Dullahan and Kennedy have both requested that their preferred micronational noms de guerre be used, in an effort to preserve their privacy.
It is a well established rule of diplomacy in micronationalism to respect the use of these preferred names, name changes, and even changes to the style of address: however, these micronationalists were in violation of that same diplomatic principle, and the Denton Protocol sought to rectify that imbalance. And it did rectify them.
Although the “freedom” argument was compelling — some micronationalists believe those arguments on the Denton Protocol destroyed the “moral authority” of the micronational Left —, the Denton Protocol is seen as being victorious in Sandus. A year later and the Denton Protocol has achieved the changes it sought out: the basic human dignity and respect established by diplomatic custom has now been reconciled and extended to transgender micronationalists. At the time, it was considered a major diplomatic failure for Sandus — one of the most harrowing experiences for the State, when it could have been pushed to the outskirts of the intermicronational community. How it saved itself and ended up achieving its goal, however, remains nothing short of a miracle. And that is a cause worth celebrating.
Read the news from 2014 about the Denton Protocol in Veritum Sandus’s archives below:
28 July 2014 – “Sandus, Zealandia promulgate new Denton Protocol”
30 July 2014 – “New Signatories calm Initial Rage over Denton Protocol”
5 Aug. 2014 – “Sandum & Ashukov Resolution to the Denton Protocol Dispute”
sandus.org 