I am curious how this amendment (if it passes) will address the issue of hermaphrodites and transgendered/sexual people? If someone is a hermaphrodite that decided not to have gender assignment surgery, would they be permitted to marry either a man or a woman? Would a person who had a sex change be allowed to marry their former sex? I wonder if this amendment is defining male as being XY (chromosomes) and female as XX or if the definition only covers what we precive as male or female on physical apperance or characteristics.
I am sure that they will be going strictly and only by what sex is marked on the drivers license.
No state is going to be doing chromosome testing for marriage licenses, and there are lots of different and confusing variations of xxy, xyy, etc. anyways.
I have no idea whether or not I’m allowed to get married, to whom, or where. Fortunately, that’s never come up, as no one’s ever asked me, and are bloody unlikely to at this point in my life.
Things will vary from state to state, but in Littleton v. Prange, the Texas Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that gender was decided at birth. Furthermore, Texas law does not recognize gay marriage. The upshot of all this is that a gay couple may receive a wedding certificate provided that one of the spouses has had gender reassignment surgery. There have been a few marriages like this, and they don’t seem to meet any legal challenge.
So, if a state’s law is backwards twice over, does that somehow make it progressive?
The Kansas supreme court reached the same conclusion in *in re Gardiner, ruling that a “post-operative male-to-female transsexual does not fit the common definition of a female” and that “a marriage between a post-operative male-to-female transsexual and a man is void as against public policy.”
Clearly, we need an amendment to define what constitutes male and female. Otherwise, the states with decide it on their own, and there will be chaos. Ultimately, it will result in the downfall of society and all sorts of debauched unions: transgendered men with transgendered women, cats with dogs, or even Democrats with Republicans! :rolleyes:
Another reason forcing federal definitions on the states is wrong-headed.
For what it’s worth, it seems fairly clear to me that a post-operative male-to-female transsexual is a WOMAN, and thus entitled to marry a man. While I agree that this may not work for, say, sports competition - didn’t we have a thread on the Olympics and this issue? - it’s unreasonable to say that marriage is unavailable to a person who has entered into surgery to ensure that her outsides match her insides.
That’s what I’d urge my state legislature to adopt as the law, anyway.
Just to pick nits in the spirit of GQ, Constitutional amendments aren’t the forcing of federal definitions on the states. It’s the states’ accepting of the amendment that makes it an amendment. Of course if you’re just talking about a federal law, then I defer back to you.
In most states, it is impossible for a transsexual to become part of a legally binding marriage – any such marriage will be voided as soon as a situation arises where it would be convenient to someone else that it be held void. See Littleton v. Prange, or Gardiner v. Gardiner.
Someone referenced the idea of a same-sex couple where one has had reassignment getting married. While this has happened in a few places, in most cases it has required a lawsuit to get the marriage license. Most marriage license clerks will initially deny the license based on the appearance that the applications are not of the opposite sex.
Just reinforces my thesis that transsexuals are whichever legal sex would be most inconvenient to the transsexual at the moment, without any regard to consistency.
Just for the sake of argument, what, exactly, qualifies as post-operative transsexual?
For instance, what if they’ve changed their mind after the surgery, stopped taking hormones, regrown a beard, etc. and begun dressing and identifying as a man?
Or, famous Hedwig, whose surgery was botched, so s/he doesn’t have well defined traditional male or female external genitalia?
[Note: I have no real knowledge about sex-change surgery, so if you do, feel free to smack down my examples with some straight dope and bring some enlightenment to me.]
Another thread has been discussing males with androgen insensitivity. They are XY genetically, but have a syndrome that prevents them from responding to male hormones, so they are to all appearances very female, including a vagina, breasts, etc (though not possessing ovaries or a uterus). They typically only discover they’re not XX female when they reach their late teens and wonder why they haven’t started menstruating.
The first type of person should be screened out by the hospital before surgery. It’s not easy to get surgery, you have to pass a number of psychological tests and live a minimum of one–two years in your new role. The number of people who “change their minds” after surgery is miniscule.
Hedwig. Yeah. That’s why I hate that damn musical. Just the kinda public image we need.
This is extremely rare – less than 1% of reassignees seek rereassignment. The Standards of Care are very effective in weeding out those who lack commitment.
You should not use popular misconceptions about transsexuals in your argument. Hedwig and the Angry Inch has absolutely no basis in reality. It’s possible to create realistic external female genitalia for someone who has already had a prior penectomy. Internally, the sensation will not be very good, but externally the result will not be distinguishable from a born woman. In real life, Hedwig could easily have had his/her “botched surgery” corrected. (I won’t even get into the issue of the implausibility of someone seeking SRS to “escape Nazi Germany”).
Nitpick; [spoiler]Hedwig wasn’t seeking to escape the Nazis. Hedwig had the operation so that s/he could marry an American soldier and leave Communist East Germany.
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