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A hundred years ago, the answer was easily determined: pull down their pants and take a look. But now there are people who have been surgically altered to change from one sex to another. The law in most states doesn't permit same-sex marriages but permits (even encourages) cross-sex marriages. How does such a law apply to someone who's been surgically altered? My take on it would be that the legal sex of someone could be altered the same way that their name would be -- in front of a judge, and only if it makes sense. Someone who's been changed really should be recognized as such, and a newly-created woman should be permitted legally to marry a man, even though she carries a Y chromosome. It remains to be seen whether the Kansas judicial system agrees. On the other hand, the article points out a perhaps even more unpleasant possibility, from the "family rights" point of view: a transsexual marries someone who is genotypically opposite but phenotypically identical. In other words, a man transformed into a woman, but still carrying a Y chromosome, marries a woman. Is it an impermissible homosexual marriage? (For that to be the case, they'd have to accept that transsexual as being female, wouldn't they?) Oddly enough, the extreme case probably isn't controversial: what if two transexuals married heterosexually? This has actually happened (I saw an interview with them) and no matter whether you judged them, by phenotype or by genotype, it appears to be a heterosexual marriage. Of course, to a casual conservative observer it would also conform to their image of the "correct" kind of marriage. (argue) |
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