The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #115854   Message #2631661
Posted By: Amos
14-May-09 - 10:40 AM
Thread Name: BS: Californians Oppose 'Prop 8' Gay Marriage Ban
Subject: RE: BS: Californians Oppose 'Prop 8' Gay Marriage Ban
Here's an interesting discussion in the NEw York Times about the silliness of anchoring the legal rights of couple-hood to gender. Well worth reading.

"Similar rulings have left couples in similar situations in Florida, Ohio and Texas. A 1999 ruling in San Antonio, in Littleton v. Prange, determined that marriage could be only between people with different chromosomes. The result, of course, was that lesbian couples in that jurisdiction were then allowed to wed as long as one member of the couple had a Y chromosome, which is the case with both transgendered male-to-females and people born with conditions like androgen insensitivity syndrome. This ruling made Texas, paradoxically, one of the first states in which gay marriage was legal.

A lawyer for the transgendered plaintiff in the Littleton case noted the absurdity of the country's gender laws as they pertain to marriage: "Taking this situation to its logical conclusion, Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Tex., is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Tex., and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male.""...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12boylan.html?em