What legal and religious impediments would gay transsexuals have to get married? In my opinion there should be no relevance as to a person’s sexual or gender orientation in society, but as it is now it this is still not widely accepted. I think that it is even MORE hypocritical to deny gay transsexuals the right to marriage, after all, they are marrying somebody of the gender opposite to them as seen by the same people who deny them their rights (did that make sense?).
What is the opinion of the main Christian denominations concerning gay transsexuals getting married? Do they still see as a sin? If so why?
What are the legal status in these cases? I would like to hear from different countries and how they deal with this.
This is what I am talking about. Thanks for putting it into words.
What I am interested in is to learn how do people who oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons deal with the nuances of gender dysphoria where you could have these cases that would in theory not violate their ban on same sex marriage.
What exactly do you mean by a “gay transsexual”? It seems that you have a problem understanding transsexuality if you think a transsexual who seeks to marry someone of the gender opposite their own as “gay”. I assure you that such an individual is straight, not gay. A gay transsexual would want to marry a member of his or her own sex: that is, a gay male-to-female transsexual would want to marry a woman, while a gay female-to-male transsexual would want to marry a man.
In some states (such as Texas), a transsexual can only marry someone of their own gender (same-sex marriage), because in Texas legal gender is forever fixed at birth. In others (such as New Jersey), a transsexual can only marry someone of the opposite gender. The exact answer as to who a transsexual can marry varies by state and also by other factors, including what surgeries (if any) the transsexual has had, what state the transsexual was born in, and what state (if any) has recognized a legal change of sex since birth and the maner in which that state recognized it.
In virtually all states a marraige involving a transsexual is legally precarious, and transsexuals who do marry are advised to take all available legal steps to preserve as many of the incidents of marriage as they can by alternative legal means in the not-so-unlikely event that their marriage is held to be void at some future date.
The only religious implications of transsexuality that I am even remotely familiar with are those in Judaism. It is a settled conclusion that reassignment is prohibited by rabbinical law (there is a prohibition on “crushing the stones” in the Torah which is interpreted to prohibit any form of voluntary castration). Rabbinical authorities are divided, however, on whether an individual who has reassigned despite the prohibition should continue to be treated as a member of their original sex or as a member of their new sex. Some authorities have also claimed that a reassigned transsexual should not be allowed to marry because he or she is inherently incapable of having children, but this position is not universally accepted.
Two people got married. They were opposite sexes at birth and when they got married. Both of them got sex changes. Now they are still the opposite sex.
In the case of a post-marriage sex change (that is, the reassignment of one spouse of an existing marriage), it has been settled law in the United States for a long time now that such an action does not dissolve the marriage. However, many of us fear that the rash adoption of “defense of marriage acts” in virtually all states may have unsettled that principle, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of couples living in this status do live in some fear of their marriages being forcibly dissolved by the state.
It used to be, but no longer is, common practice for surgeons to demand candidates for surgery obtain (at first) a divorce, and then later a waiver from the candidates spouse. I don’t think this is done anymore, largely because the “alienation of affection” tort is no longer valid anywhere in the country.
It should be noted that only 3% of marriages survive the reassignment of one partner, according to statistics given to me by my first psychiatrist.
By contrast, in the UK, under the pending Gender Recognition Bill, no person who is married would be permitted to legally change his or her legal gender. In order to legally change your gender, you would have to first obtain a divorce. This condition is considered offensive by a great many, but that’s what Parliament decided to do.
What we have here is a failure to communicate… on my part.
I do understand what you mean, furthermore, I researched a bit about it before asking here but found few mentions of the legal and religious aspects. I know that a MtF transsexual can be attracted to men, in which case she is straight, but not to the eyes of the less enlightened folks here, remember the SDMB is nothing like society. In the eyes of the uneducated, the religious fanatic or the bigot they might just be considered a gay man in drags. The same goes for FtM transsexual that are attracted to women, they are transsexuals and they are lesbians (aren’t they not?).
Now, the point is that various combinations can occur where a couple, regardless of their sexual orientation, was of different genders before reassignment. I am interested in how the law and religion deal with the conflict between the fact that these folks are in no apparent violation of their ‘gender codes’ and that their religion/law bans same-sex marriage.
The question makes sense in my head, but alas my vocabulary is limited.
Quibble: reassignment changes sex, not gender. Gender is, as far as we can tell, immutable after birth.
The law is inconsistent in its treatment of transsexuals. One can generally assume that a transsexual will be treated as whichever legal sex is least convenient to that individual in whatever circumstance their legal sex is a matter of dispute. Thus, a MtF transsexual is female for the purpose of public decency regulations (and thus must wear a shirt) but male for the purpose of determining automobile insurance rates (and thus must pay more). We’re starting to make some progress on this, but by and large when a dispute has arisen, that’s the course the courts have usually ended up taking.
As far as religious beliefs go: my experience is that most religions that have a stick up the ass about gay marriage also have one up the ass about transsexuality. Many of them even believe that, since we’re incapable of reproduction after reassignment, we shouldn’t be having sex or getting married at all, to anyone of any sex.
I have yet to see any religious official state that it’s ok for a post-op MtF to marry another woman because “in the eyes of God they’re a man and a woman”. Either they say it’s ok because God is Love and blesses any union founded in love regardless of the natures of the partners, or else it’s not ok because transsexuals are going against God’s Plan and besides they’re acting like lesbians and God hates fags.
I’d think your average rabbi or minister would, sadly, just say “Since you mutilated your body to look like the opposite sex, it’s clear you’re profoundly disturbed. You’re obviously too insane to enter into a marriage and I refuse to perform the ceremony.”
Re Judaism And Castration
There’s a passage forbidding a self-made eunuch from marrying a Jewish woman. The context is entirely different. Moloch and some other deities demanded that male worshippers offer up their gonads. The ban makes it clear that the G-d of Abraham wants His followers to keep their genitals in working order and reproduce. But for Talmud scholars, the law is the law and knowing why it was made doesn’t invalidate it.
If anybody wants, I’ll go hunt up cites, Rabbis and go into more detail.
Briefly, I still hope some fertility specialist invents a procedure that, with slight modification, can be used to give post-ops fully functional reproductive systems. Besides the obvious wonderful benefits, this would render the objection meaningless as the person would still be capable of having kids.
At present, a married person in Quebec cannot apply for the alteration of his or her legal sex. I assume this will be changed now that we have same-sex marriage.
Yes, legalising same-sex marriage makes this a LOT easier. It’s just Person A marrying Person B. The only problem I see is determining “legal gender”, or “what you put on your ID cards”. (We really need either a) a procedure for changing M to F (or vice versa), or b) another choice on the documents (O for Other?).)
KellyM, what did you mean by “reassignment changes sex, not gender. Gender is, as far as we can tell, immutable after birth”?
Are you referring to ‘sex’ being the plumbing, so to speak, and ‘gender’ being the person’s internal sensation/personality trait/tendency/whatever?
What we need to do is stop putting gender markers on legal documents altogether. Seriously, why does it matter to the DMV that I’m female? My driving privileges aren’t dependent on my gender, so why do they need to know it at all?
And don’t tell me that listing sex or gender helps with identification. Gender cannot be assessed without a psychiatric interview, sex requires the individual strip to the waist at the very least, and gender role is highly mutable. None of these is really suitable for use for identification. As far as I can tell, putting gender markers on state-issued identification just invites discrimination against those who elect a gender role that deviates from the social norm for a person of their sex and gender.
This is the standard usage of those terms. The language is reasonably precise; it’s just that a lot of people misuse it.