Monday, Oct. 6, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) did not take up the marriage equality appeals of five states, so the federal Courts of Appeal rulings for those five states (as well as another six states in the Appeals’ Court Districts covered by those first five states) have, or will in short order have, marriage equality. Within days or weeks, 30 states will be marriage equality states.
And that’s a trans issue. It’s a trans issue not only because the T is part of the LGBT community, but because the marriages of trans people are considered gay or heterosexual marriages based on what gender one considers a trans person to be in the first place. It’s as Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) stated back in 2005: “Every trans person who’s in a relationship, regardless of what their gender is or ever was they’re either in a same-sex relationship or in an opposite sex relationships that somebody could claim was a same-sex relationship.”
Oct. 6 – the same day as the marriage equality news from SCOTUS broke – the American Family Association’s (AFA’s) Bryan Fischer had a second column about a couple from Mississippi post to AFA’s “news” site OneNewsNow, entitled The continuing saga of the lesbians who got ‘married’ in Mississippi. That piece was a follow-up piece to Fischer’s Sept. 24 column Lesbians commit biological fraud, get ‘married’ in Mississippi. The reason Fischer cares at all about this marriage between newlyweds Nick and Jessica Fulgham of Olive Branch, Mississippi is because the man in this heterosexual marriage is a trans man.
“‘Natalie’ (not her real name) is so sexually confused she apparently believes she is a man trapped inside a woman’s body,” said Fischer in the Sept. 24 column about Nick Fulgham, “despite the fact that her DNA is 100-percent female and will be until the day she dies. She is a woman in every, single solitary cell of her body. Her birth certificate identifies her as a female and will until the day she dies.”
“Since both parties to this faux marriage are females, the state constitutional and legal standard has been violated here,” added Fischer in the Oct. 6 column. “The real issue now is whether the state of Mississippi will allow this unconstitutional wedding to stand.”
Mississippi isn’t one of the 30 states that have, or will within days or weeks, have marriage equality. However, instead of this being about Mississippi’s state constitutional “protection for natural marriage” being applied to the Fulghams as Fisher demands, perhaps it’s more of a case of how long the federal courts are going to allow Mississippi’s “protection for natural marriage” to stand.
One of the states that is impacted by SCOTUS’s action Oct. 6 is Kansas. In 2002, the Kansas Supreme Court in Estate of Gardiner ruled that, “The words ‘sex,’ ‘marriage,’ ‘male’ and ‘female’ in everyday understanding do not encompass transsexuals. The common, ordinary meaning of ‘persons of the opposite sex’ contemplates what is commonly understood to be a biological man and a biological woman. A post-operative male-to-female transsexual does not fit the common definition of a female.” The court ruled the marriage of J’Noel Ball and Marshall G. Gardiner in Oskaloosa, Kansas in September 1998 wasn’t a valid marriage because the court considered J’Noel male, and Kansas considered their marriage to be an impermissible same-sex marriage.
It’s a horrid thing to me that Kansas wouldn’t recognize the Gardiner’s marriage because it wouldn’t recognize J’Noel Gardiner as female. Her gender never would’ve been challenged, however, if Kansas had been a marriage equality state: the reason her gender was challenged in court was because when Marshall G. Gardiner passed he didn’t leave a will, and Gardiner’s son and other heir Joe sued to invalidate J’Noel and Marshall Gardiner’s marriage over distribution of the estate.
That marriage equality is a T issue too is something to keep in mind as marriage equality looks soon to be a 50-state and U.S. territories’ national reality. Marriage equality is a trans issue for exactly the reason Mara Keisling spelled out years ago.
In the Gardiner case, her “gender” was NEVER an issue. Her sex was. She was a post-op transsexual, and as such, her sex was female. Kansas chose to ignore this. This increasing use of “gender” to blur the fact that many wish to claim to be “female” when they are actually males is very disingenuous, and is basically fraudulent. Transsexuals do not change their gender, they change their sex. In fact, gender is immutable. One is either born with a brain that is inherently female, or one that is inherently male. NOTHING has been found that can change this. This is why the proper and accepted treatment for transsexuals is hormonal and surgical reassignment. Changing one’s wardrobe, and claiming that changes one’s sex OR gender is a fiction.
As is too often the case, when it comes to actual true transsexuals, Sandeen gets it wrong. Sandeen deliberately confuses true legitimate transsexuals especially transsexual women with Tee-Gees. The Tee-Gee community deliberately confuses sex and gender, gender is between the ears, and sex is between the legs.
Transsexuals in states where birth certificates can be legally replaced with new birth certificates that are not amended have never had ANY problem marring partners of the opposite SEX. Sandeen is once again wrong in lumping heterosexual transsexuals in with Tee-Gees and so called Trans-lesbians. Here in California for the past 40 or more years a transsexual woman has been able to change her legal sex after the proper surgery and have a new birth certificate generated and the old one sealed, where it takes a judge to unseal that document.
Autumn you should do your homework before posting lies and half truths.
Anne
Exactly. And in most states, a person who is post-op, and especially someone who has changed their birth certificate, is allowed to marry. In fact, some years ago, in Alabama there was a rather odd case where a post-op, who identified as a lesbian, and who was apparently very unpassable, went to a court house and got a license to marry a female. Then this person, who was clearly a bit of a kook made a big deal out of how this would be a “legal same sex marriage” in Alabama. The Attorney General very quickly issued a ruling that no, it would not be a legal marriage, since the person had had a change of sex, and was now a woman, and could not marry another woman.
I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand what you are afraid of? It’s like you and Anne are the trans* police, duty-bound to expose all those that are not pure enough or do not ascribe the “proper and accepted treatment for transsexuals. Your constant rhetoric remains me of strait people who say that letting LGBT marry somehow makes their marriage less valid by diluting the status with inferior people.
As a post op transsexual of 30 plus years, college educated, business owner, with what Anne calls all the “proper surgery,” I’ve come to embrace the movement not fear and loath it. I know, I know, I am no longer a true transsexual, a traitor to the purity of the old world order. Yes Mr. Dylan , “the times they are a changing.” Now you have an opening to attack me. Give me your best shot.
I am not afraid of anything. I am simply making a differentiation between those who are transsexuals, and those who are not. I am sorry, but I happen to strongly disagree with much of the silliness put forward by “transgender extremists.” You know, I am allowed to hold a different political view. If you have come to embrace that movement, that is your choice, and quite frankly, it has no bearing on whether or not you are a “true transsexual.” I would consider you to be someone who holds a different political viewpoint, nothing more, or less. As a point of fact, being transsexual has nothing to do with being transgender, which is an identity, not an objective fact. If you choose to identify as transgender, that is your right. I don’t.
Change is not always good. As to LGBT people getting married, I happen to support marriage equality. But I also believe that until it is granted in a particular state, one should continue to follow that state’s laws. Doing otherwise does not help the cause.
And no, I don’t believe that women have and wish to keep penises, period. If someone born male claims to be a woman, or a transsexual, and wishes to keep their penis, then I happen to disagree with that claim. Your mileage may vary….
I refuse to support marriage equality until the LGBT gets behind the liberation of marriage, meaning any group of people would have the right to marry. Group marriages are the future especially in this pit of shit economy. I should be able to marry a dozen of my friends if we so choose.
But no the gays won’t have true marriage equality, they don’t give a flying fuck.
Anne
You are confusing fear with contempt.
So what made you come out, or did someone out you?
I know a dozen or so women who have connected their birth defect and none o them would willingly out themselves, yours truly included. Transition is to move on, not get stuck in being something other a man or woman, or making your surgery your identity. I didn’t own my surgery, I used it as a tool to own my body.
Anne
Forever Female
I outed my self. Because after 30 years of making up stories about my past, I could no longer live with being dishonest. For example, I enjoyed sports in high school and college. I played varsity baseball as a freshman in college, but at dinner parties when all the males were boosting about their accomplishments I had to keep my past a big secret. When my male friends shared their experiences about being drafted in the 1960s and going to Vietnam, I had to just smile. I got tired of hiding my past.
Well you don’t look very out here, I have never met someone with the name WTF.
Maybe you haven’t come to terms with your transition or why you did it in the first place. There were things I had to do to “fit in” and I am ashamed of those, so my past was much easier to divorce.
So what you are saying is now you are known as the Tee-Gee in your circle of friends. If you are like me the majority of your friends are straight, heterosexual and I can count the number of LGBT people in my life on 1 hand. For every one of those I have 5 or more friends who are not LGBT.
For those of us who corrected our birth defect and moved on our past is a vague memory, we tend to put it behind us, giving away photo albums to our relatives, and disassociating ourselves from those family members who can’t deal with our transition. While I know almost a dozen Post-Ops only 1 identified with the LGBT. All of the rest of us have moved on, some married with children and others pursuing their pretransition careers.
Unlike the Tee-Gee who chooses to keep his manparts ours is an accident of birth and we like anybody else born with a physical handicap prefer to correct the problem and move on.
Anne
But if all that is true, why do you bother with this site? You say you moved on. I’ll accept the fact that you are a real woman who has corrected a birth defect. But I don’t no of many heterosexual women, a least within my circle, who would even think of reading the LGBT Weekly and respond to the articles.
Well, if they had been stalked by Sandeen, they might…. And as I said, I do care about those who are starting their transitions, and who might get sucked in by the stuff some claim.
ROTFL! Well, it sounds like you had a very different experience growing up than I did. I avoided sports as much as possible, as I was neither very good at them, nor did I have much in the way of interest. I was lucky enough to have been born a year too late to have seriously faced the draft. I was not a “success” as a male, so I have never felt the need to brag about it, and if I had been, I seriously doubt any of this would be an issue for me. While there are a few things I might not mention, most of my past requires no hiding. My experiences that involved being specifically male were not all that pleasant, and not something I have any desire to mention or to force on others.
Can you explain something else I do not understand. Anne says in the above comment, “transition is to move on, not get stuck in being something other a man or woman, or making your surgery your identity.” For the last 30 years that’s pretty much what I did. After my transition and before recently coming out I never gave LGB and particularly T politics a second thought. What I do not understand is why you and Anne are even paying attention to what is being said in an LGBT publication, Shouldn’t you just move on. Why do you care what the Ts do? You are not a T but real women. This should not be your fight if you have truly moved on.
Someone needs to voice the opposing opinion.
The people I see going back to the LGBT are those who can’t pass, they get Sir’ed on the phone, in person, everywhere they go they get Sir’ed.
Anne
There was a time, not that long ago, when there were basically crossdressers, and there were transsexuals. They were two distinct groups. And we could largely ignore each other. Then, starting in the 1990’s, a few extremists began pushing this new idea called “transgender” which held that were were all part of a greater whole. Suddenly, those who had gone through transition, and who had moved on were being pressured to identify with crossdressers and other various behaviors that they had nothing in common with. We were expected to all be one big happy group.
Living in San Francisco, I have a number of gay and lesbian friends, as well as a number of straight ones. Personally, I would not care what transgender people do, if they remained as they once were, but now they are pushing ideas that I find quite repugnant. They are insisting that differences are not important, and that men, who are obviously men, should be allowed in women’s spaces. I am no happier about this than any other woman would be. I am also concerned about those who are starting their transitions who are being pressured to identify with a very harmful movement.