Intersex and/or transperson? The Lambda Legal person quoted doesn't seem to get it.

Judge orders genetic testing in divorce case

03/02/2004

By PAM EASTON / Associated Press


A person born as a man but now legally a woman was ordered Tuesday to undergo genetic testing before moving forward with an attempt to void a marriage with another woman.

Linda Gail Carter, born James Howard Murphy, wants a union with Constance D. Gonzales voided after the pair were married by a minister in Las Vegas in October 1998. Carter had her gender legally declared female more than four months before the wedding, and has a Texas driver's license that identifies her as female.

Gonzales, who says she lived in Houston with Carter until March 2003, filed for divorce, which if granted would recognize the marriage. Carter, who pulled her hair back at the nape of her neck and wore a suit coat to court Tuesday, claims the marriage should not be recognized because both are female and Texas does not recognize same-sex unions.

A Texas appeals panel ruled in 1999 that a person's sex is determined by chromosomes.

State District Judge Lisa Ann Millard gave Carter until March 22 to undergo chromosomal testing first ordered last year. Carter failed to appear for that testing in November, according to court documents.

"Although claiming to be female as the result of a judicial proceeding, (Linda Gail Carter) is 6-foot-4, weighs 275 pounds and purportedly has male genitalia," Gonzales' attorney, S.C. Childress, argued in a motion. "It is the contention of Constance D. Gonzales Carter that Linda Gail Carter, also known as James Howard Murphy, is male and that their marriage is therefore valid."

Carter's attorney, Elsie Martin-Simon, argued there is no need for the chromosomal testing because a 1998 judgment legally changed Carter's name and gender designation. She said the testing violates her client's privacy and height has nothing to do with a person's gender, pointing to a number of female professional basketball players.

"Surely, it cannot be contended that these famous 'female athletes' are not 'female,'" she wrote.

Jerry Simoneaux, president of the Stonewall Law Association of Greater Houston, said getting a divorce, as opposed to having the union voided, would likely entitle Gonzales to more of the property the couple is disputing over. The association focuses on legal issues affecting gay and transgendered people.

"Constance Gonzales and I never lived together as spouses, never held ourselves out as spouses in the state of Texas and never agreed to be 'purportedly married' prior to the purported marriage ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada on Oct. 31, 1998," Carter said in a sworn affidavit.

Martin-Simon declined to comment about the case to The Associated Press after Tuesday's hearing, citing a gag order in the case. Childress did not return a phone message left by The AP.

Richard Carlson, a law professor at South Texas College of Law, said the law is unsettled in Texas about whether a person can change gender.

Carlson said if chromosomal testing determines Carter is a male, the appropriate remedy would be to grant a divorce.

Meanwhile, Simoneaux said the chromosomal test could show Carter is an intersexed person with both male and female characteristics and possibly force the court to determine whether an intersex person can marry people of both sexes or no one at all.

"We really don't know how to treat people where two people are married and one person is transgendered," he said. "To most people it is going to be a same-sex marriage, but to the state of Texas they are only concerned with chromosomes and therefore it is an opposite sex marriage."

__________________
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. --Margaret Mitchell

Hey!..., and one may think: that doesn't make sense:

quote:

"the law is unsettled in Texas about whether a person can change gender".

Yes, well, the law (in Texas and elsewhere) seems to have NO difficulty at all when it comes to changing both the gender and/or sex of intersexed babies and children!

quote:
"to determine whether an intersex person can marry people of both sexes or no one at all."

And just WHO determines??.

Yes, it is evident that a great many don't/can't/won't/ "get it."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity."
-Martin Luther King, Jr

This article is proven beyond a doubt that being IS is beyond Society's interpretation of being who deemed is nesscary to do blood work.
Surprisngly there is not a story on DNA , humm lets find the gene.

Here here ! ! Oh man Cut me Baby, oh yes make me it real good and make me your impression of your distinction of what I should be.
I do not want to be cut I want to be me sane and normal get away from me Cut Man.
It is not up to you.


Muhoe
Az1

quote:

"Here here ! ! Oh man Cut me Baby, oh yes make me it real good "


Ooooohhh! And that hypodermic needle feels soooo good when you put it in me with its "normalcy" contents flowing into my body.....Aaahhh..... I can hardly wait till next time!:p

Thanks, Muhoe!!!:D I really needed to have a laugh this morning

Dana:)

What infuriates me is people like Phyllis Frye and their transgendered kronies who engourage MTF "lesbians" to move to Texas to get "legal same sex marraiges" to XX women on the basis of the MTF having "male" chromosomes. That is not helping anyone but themselves, and has a potential to hurt al lot of other people. For one, XX female lesbians do not have that loophole. Two, it reinforces the chromosomes==sex that we of all people know to be simply not true.

What Frye has done is to exploit the case of Christie Littleton (a woman who was declared to be a "man" based on her chromosomes, by a greedy lawyer seeking to aviod paying a malpractice settlement) for their own benefit. In doing so, Frye has put the right of all of us with atypical chromosomes (IS and TS) to be recognized in the gender in which we live, in jeopardy.

I am lucky in that I have a female birth certificate. For now. But what If I want to marry in the future here in Texas (my home)? Will I be forced to undergo chromosome testing? If it comes back XY will I have my birth certificate revoked? An "m" designation on my drivers licence? Be forced to use the men's restroom in public? Where will it end?

I am sure it won't go that for (I hope!), but it will go farther that it is now, and that is bad enough.

__________________
Cheers,
Meresa

There will be no second-class citizens in this society.
-- Chuck Panozzo

quote:

"For one, XX female lesbians do not have that loophole"."

The world of politics and "law" has become a down and dirty place indeed, when in order to "get one thing" for one person or group, "loopholes","legal manipulations", and bargaining at the expense of others are, and/or have to be, resorted to. It is just pork- barrel politics (and law-making) as usual....and sadly, has gone on for a long time.

[pork barrel]
n. Slang

A government project or appropriation that yields jobs or other benefits to a specific locale and patronage opportunities to its political representative.

Or actually it is Schwein -barrel politics.

[Schwein]

German noun {idiomatic/slang}

An entity or person of selfish nature and with dubious intentions, that engages in greedy and/or demeaning enterprises.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Actually, if they were to require karotype testing, it could be a good thing and could overturn Littleton when people start turning up who didn't have a gender assignment choice at birth and don't match their assumed chromosomes.

Betsy

__________________
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. --Margaret Mitchell

Yes I agree ,
Just think of karotyping ,
I think we would find out alot about people and their genomapping.

btw way Dana you are welcome,

Muhoe
Az1

So if gender in TX is based on chromosomes, what do they call mosaics and people with Turner's syndrome (XX/XY, XO, etc.)?