RGMCjim
06-26-03, 05:20 PM
Today is a major victory for GLBTI people in the USA. The Supreme Court ruled that it is against the Constitutional right to privacy to create and single out a class of people for the purposes of discrimination by making their sexual activities illegal. The Anti-Sodomy laws of 13 states were struck down today. Lambda Legal Defense and other Gay rights groups forced the issue into the Supreme Court using a case of 2 men who were arrested in 1998 for having sex in their own bedroom when Police entered their appartment responding to a fake report of a robbery in progress by a neighbor with a grudge. In addition to being jailed and fined the couple was forced to register as sex-offenders which would preclude them from many jobs and legally stigmatize them as sexual predators.
Why does this matter to the intersexed? It matters because any sex other than penis/vagina sex is sodomy. Many intersexed people can have no sex that isn't sodomy - just like gays, lesbians and many transsexuals. Also, sodomy laws have been used to argue that GLBTI are not a People - a minority with an identity and culture, but rather that we are heterosexual/males/females with deformities, morality problems, or just engage in illegal sex. For intersexed people to force ourselves out of a pathology and into a legitimate exsistance any laws that discriminate against other GLBT people are our issues as well. Even if we aren't sexually involved with our assigned gender, or haven't transitioned like transsexuals, every thing used to discriminate against "them" does, can and will used against "us."
The next HUGE legal action is due to take place in Mass. The challenge is that banning same sex marriage also creates a class of people for the purpose of discrimination and is thereby against the State Constitution. Coming on the heals of the ruling that banning GLBT marriage is unconstitutional in Canada this is huge. Considering that many states are now defining male/female according to chromosomes, and many intersexed people's chromosomes don't match their assigned sex even heterosexual intersexed have cause to be nervous.
I've got a personal stake in it that reads like Alice in Wonderland on ecstacy it's so bizarre. I was originally assigned female, but raised male. I've lived my whole life as male and every record I have except my birth certificate reads male. I've never been able to change the birth certificate because Vital Statistics in NY has no way to deal with the intersexed - just transsexuals, and right now their "rule of thumb" for transsexuals (there is no statute!) is that you can't be a man if you have a uterus. You can't be a woman if you have a penis. You can have any other combination of organs/genitals but not those. When asked what this means to the intersexed I was told the same thing I have the other times I tried it. They don't know what to do about us. My lawyer wants to argue that they should change my birth certificate anyway because my uterus doesn't work, so it's the same as not having one. She also intends to argue that a birth certificate is meant to establish a social identity of Man/Woman and not to establish a physical definintion of male/female. We'll see.
So here I am. I have not a single record to link me to the name and sex on my birth certificate, I've lived as a man all my life and am not exactly male or female, I've been married as a man to a woman (you didn't used to need a birth certificate for marriage - you do now) and am an adoptive father. If they legalized gay marraige tomorrow I still couldn't marry my partner because my.....wait a minute - maybe I could....If the State refuses to change the sex on my birth certificate it will always read F. However, they can not deny me the right to change the name which will finally link me to my birth certificate. Do you see where I am going next?? I'm gay. My partner of 9 years and I can't marry because we're both "male". In reality I have no more cause to claim to be male than I do to be female, but the only thing that counts is my LEGAL STATUS as defined by my Birth Certificate. For marriage it takes precidence over every other record I have, all of which read MALE. BUT IF I HAVE A BIRTH CERTIFICATE THAT SAYS MY SEX IS F THEY CAN'T DENY ME THE RIGHT TO MARRY HIM. You don't have to be a woman to marry a man. You just have to have the legal status of Female to his legal status of MALE. Transsexual lesbian couples have doing this in many states, I know a couple who just did it last month.
Sigh. Sometimes all of this just weighs too much to carry.
Jim Costich
Why does this matter to the intersexed? It matters because any sex other than penis/vagina sex is sodomy. Many intersexed people can have no sex that isn't sodomy - just like gays, lesbians and many transsexuals. Also, sodomy laws have been used to argue that GLBTI are not a People - a minority with an identity and culture, but rather that we are heterosexual/males/females with deformities, morality problems, or just engage in illegal sex. For intersexed people to force ourselves out of a pathology and into a legitimate exsistance any laws that discriminate against other GLBT people are our issues as well. Even if we aren't sexually involved with our assigned gender, or haven't transitioned like transsexuals, every thing used to discriminate against "them" does, can and will used against "us."
The next HUGE legal action is due to take place in Mass. The challenge is that banning same sex marriage also creates a class of people for the purpose of discrimination and is thereby against the State Constitution. Coming on the heals of the ruling that banning GLBT marriage is unconstitutional in Canada this is huge. Considering that many states are now defining male/female according to chromosomes, and many intersexed people's chromosomes don't match their assigned sex even heterosexual intersexed have cause to be nervous.
I've got a personal stake in it that reads like Alice in Wonderland on ecstacy it's so bizarre. I was originally assigned female, but raised male. I've lived my whole life as male and every record I have except my birth certificate reads male. I've never been able to change the birth certificate because Vital Statistics in NY has no way to deal with the intersexed - just transsexuals, and right now their "rule of thumb" for transsexuals (there is no statute!) is that you can't be a man if you have a uterus. You can't be a woman if you have a penis. You can have any other combination of organs/genitals but not those. When asked what this means to the intersexed I was told the same thing I have the other times I tried it. They don't know what to do about us. My lawyer wants to argue that they should change my birth certificate anyway because my uterus doesn't work, so it's the same as not having one. She also intends to argue that a birth certificate is meant to establish a social identity of Man/Woman and not to establish a physical definintion of male/female. We'll see.
So here I am. I have not a single record to link me to the name and sex on my birth certificate, I've lived as a man all my life and am not exactly male or female, I've been married as a man to a woman (you didn't used to need a birth certificate for marriage - you do now) and am an adoptive father. If they legalized gay marraige tomorrow I still couldn't marry my partner because my.....wait a minute - maybe I could....If the State refuses to change the sex on my birth certificate it will always read F. However, they can not deny me the right to change the name which will finally link me to my birth certificate. Do you see where I am going next?? I'm gay. My partner of 9 years and I can't marry because we're both "male". In reality I have no more cause to claim to be male than I do to be female, but the only thing that counts is my LEGAL STATUS as defined by my Birth Certificate. For marriage it takes precidence over every other record I have, all of which read MALE. BUT IF I HAVE A BIRTH CERTIFICATE THAT SAYS MY SEX IS F THEY CAN'T DENY ME THE RIGHT TO MARRY HIM. You don't have to be a woman to marry a man. You just have to have the legal status of Female to his legal status of MALE. Transsexual lesbian couples have doing this in many states, I know a couple who just did it last month.
Sigh. Sometimes all of this just weighs too much to carry.
Jim Costich