Quellendorf - Residents of a village in eastern Germany have voted in a referendum to dismiss their mayor after he decided to change his sexual identity.
The vote in Quellendorf near Leipzig on Sunday night went against Mr Norbert Lindner (40), a married father-of-two who earlier this year assumed a female identity and began calling himself Michaela.
Mr Lindner, who is awaiting a sex change operation, said he now expected to leave Quellendorf, and possibly Germany altogether.
Friends of Mr Lindner said he nonetheless planned to challenge the vote in Germany's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. The village council decided earlier this year to call a referendum of its 874 voters on whether to sack Mr Lindner, a member of the reform communist Party of Democratic Socialism. Mr Lindner has accused the villagers of intolerance. They said he disturbed their tranquillity by deliberately courting publicity.
