Paraguay has long been a very conservative and catholic country. Until 1992 the Catholic Church was the official religion recognized by the Constitution, and until the early 1980's any and all protestant and evangelical religious groups or churches were barely tolerated if not outright persecuted. The favorite tactic was for catholic churches and chapels to mount bull-horn type speakers in their towers and blast live or recorded services over the whole neighborhood, especially during the meeting times of those “damned evangelicals spawned by the Devil himself”.

After the ousting of the dictator in 1989 and the start of liberalization brought on by democracy, many evangelical preachers and pastors in the very early 1990s started preaching against the sins of sex and sexual perversions of adultery, gays, lesbians and prostitution. Very soon the trans spectrum and any kind of gender variance got included as well.

By the mid 2010s this anti-sex rhetoric had spilled over into the social media realm and become so radicalized, that church members started asking in public forums on social media: “Pastor, are you saying that I should get myself a gun and go shoot any homo pervert I find?”

After a few more of these very embarrassing incidents, the religious rhetoric became more subtle though it remained as intolerant as ever.

To this day the Government refuses to recognize the right of freedom from discrimination for gender expression written into the “Declaration of Human Rights from San Juan” that was ratified by Paraguay.

Even though there have been a few cases where the courts granted a change of the sex marker, the Attorney General (not a cabinet position) has appealed every one of those and managed to get the change stayed or overturned.