Yes.
The law should recognize gender reassignment surgery as effective in changing one’s birth gender.
So my position is:
-and-
Amazingly, though, it doesn’t.
This is because the rules of statutory construction provide that ambiguous language is not interpreted to produce an absurd result, and that provisions of law must be read together, in pari materia, giving full effect to each. In this case, (a) says, " Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." This must be read with at least equal force with (b), “state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” If (b) might be assumed, alone, to forbid marriage itself as well as “…any legal status identical or similar to marriage,” that interpretation is dashed by (a), which explicitly and narrowly declares that marriage does exist in the state.
That horse left the barn back in 2000.
I concur and join this opinion.
Oh, if only the rules mattered, Bricker, things would be different all over.
If what appears to be a man and a woman enter the county courthouse and ask for a marriage license, will they be able to get one? That is the question to me. I asked some time ago where a same-sex couple is stopped from marrying and was told this was the point. They couldn’t get a license. So, assuming the man and woman above have all the usual papers that mark them as such (passport, driver license) who’s gonna stop them from getting married? I don’t remember having to prove that I was male (it was a while ago) when I got married. Do they inspect birth certificates?
Excellent. Reality outpaces the hypothetical again.
Where it gets really complicated is where different states have different laws concerning what sex they consider someone to be. For instance, suppose that State A and State B both prohibit same-sex marriage, but State A considers sex to be fixed at birth, and State B recognizes sex-changes. Let’s say we have Robin, considered male at birth but who identifies as female and had surgery to change es genitals to female. Robin marries Mary (an unambiguous female) in State A, and A recognizes the marriage, because in the eyes of the state, Robin is male. Robin then moves to state B, where Robin is officially considered female, and the marriage to Mary is considered invalid as a same-sex marriage. In state B, since Robin has no valid marriage, e’s free to marry, and weds Frank (an unambiguous male). So now, in the eyes of the law, Robin is married to Mary in state A, and to Frank in state B.
If we want to get even more complicated, let’s introduce state C, which allows same-sex marriage (but still not polygamy). State C would recognize Robin’s marriage to Mary, no matter what they considered Robin to be, and would not recognize Robin’s marriage to Frank, since Robin was already in a valid marriage at the time. Now, Robin moves to state C, and after a while, Mary dies (of what we’ll presume is natural causes), leaving Robin without any marriage recognized by C. Robin now marries Jamie, another M-to-F, in state C (a marriage which would not have been recognized in A or B).
I pretty much fully agree with Left Hand of Dorkness.
Why is question #2 a complicated question? Because things are not as simple as they appear.
Let’s say hypothetically my brain gets magically swapped out with someone else’s, like in that movie The Hot Chick. I’m female, and I think of myself as a woman, and so even if the body my brain ends up in is equipped for making sperm, in this crazy hypothetical situation I’m still a woman, because I still have the same exact brain and personality. The new body is for all intents and purposes my body, even if it’s not my ‘real’ body, since my brain is at the helm, controlling all of its processes. So if I’m a woman, and this is my body, doesn’t that make it by definition a woman’s body?
This is basically the situation that a trans person is in. Some people want to change their bodies to better represent their ‘real’ body, but some people don’t, because they feel like what they’ve got is theirs, for better or for worse.
And what if the body you’re born with isn’t clearly male or clearly female? Here’s just yet another place where the concept of ‘male’ vs. ‘female’ bodies falls apart. It’s useful to make the distinction as a generalization (male bodies make sperm and belong to men, and female bodies make eggs and belong to women) but when there are individual cases where people are not adequately included in or protected by this definition, I think it’s the law’s responsibility to provide for everyone.
So what I’m saying is, I think the whole concept of having a legal sex is pointless and I don’t know why it’s relevant that all of my legal documents state that. Sure, the fact that I’m female is a fact about me, but it’s about as important as there hypothetically being a little box on my passport saying I’m right handed. Maybe someone here is better informed than I am, but I can’t think of any other laws that affect me differently because I’m legally female.
I now call semantic satiation on the word body. Body body body body body body.
Now you have Macho Man stuck in my head, thanks a lot.
Body, body, body wanna feel my body,
Body, body, body gonna thrill my body,
Body, body, body don’tcha stop my body,
Body, body, body it’s so hot my body,
Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey!
Macho, macho man (macho man)
I’ve got to be, a macho man
Macho, macho man
I’ve got to be a macho!
This can get very odd for me. The most extreme example is a little kid who goes by Josie, she is a boy that insists she is a girl. The parents even managed to get her birth certificate changed from boy to girl. She’s like 10 but had this done earlier.
OK fine, I have no issue except at what point do you allow the change? When sex surgery is done? When hormonal treatment starts? When the person has lived as the opposite gender for “X” amount of years?
Then you also have to distinguish between transgendered and intersex people. Transgendered people have normal genitalia and normal chromosomes. Intersex people would have ambiguous genitalia and/or chromosome abnormalities, that make it difficult to determine what sex they are.
The goverment should not be involved in marriage at all. Issues of property can be dealt with by contract law.
No they have not changed their sex/gender, their chromosomes remain unchanged. You can redefine the meaning of the words, but there will always be some words that uniquely describe the chromosomal composition of the vast majority of people. But what I actually mean is, who cares? Marriage should be no one’s business except for the fools involved.
Property law, sure, but inheritance and custody of children are whole different issues and I think makes it relevant for people to legally enter into a family relationship. Though I’ll say it seems to me to be excessive entanglement with religion to call it ‘marriage’, which is a religious ceremony at heart, and therefore either let religion determine the law or force religious institutions to perform marriages they do not believe are valid.
What I wanted to ask you, though, is what would you consider a person whose chromosomes are XXY? Should that person have a separate legal sex on their documents or should their parents ‘choose’ a sex for them?
There are wills for inheritance, and there is a whole body of custody law that exists independent of marriage.
I consider a person with XXY chromosomes a person. Why do they need a ‘legal’ sex on a document? Maybe on some medical form, but that would be none of my business.
Sure, we have all these cultural components that are based on almost everybody falling in one of two categories. I just don’t want the government making laws that treat people differently because of inconsequential physical characteristics.
It’s only a “religious ceremony at heart” to the believers who want to lay claim to it like they want to lay claim to everything else. Non-religious people get married too.
What about the concept of marital confidentiality? Can I prevent my “contract partner” from testifying in court about something I told him/her in confidence? Can my “contract partner” make medical decisions on my behalf and compel the hospital who has physical custody of me as a patient to go along?
In some aspects, governmental recognition and backup is indeed a necessary part of marriage, in ways not covered by straight-up contracts.
Frankly, I’d say he has been betrayed by his parents. If he does not associate himself with a traditionally male gender role, his parents should have been supportive of the idea that a boy doesn’t have to like monster trucks and headbutting people, instead of letting him come to believe that this makes him Not A Man and needs to have his genitals mutilated so that he conforms.
I do not agree with this. If nothing else, it’s perfectly reasonable to have an all-in-one contract template available that everyone’s familiar with.
You can give power of attorney to someone else to make medical decisions for you.
I’m not thrilled with spousal privilege. It doesn’t seem to apply that often anyway. And it carries all the problems of marriage as well. The state doesn’t involve itself in establishing the validity of a marriage based on some special relationship between parties. We don’t know if married people love each other or care about each other at all. I think we would all be better off if the government wasn’t involved in matters like that at all. Then we wouldn’t need an official ‘sex’ on forms.
How much money do you expect people to spend in lawyer fees to draw up all these contracts?
I have no problem with a simple all-in-one contract for people to sign when they engage in the contractual obligations that we have traditionally associated with marriage.