So, ok, I have decided to revive the idea of writing about my classes. It will provide me with distraction and keep everyone else interetsed, and hopefully I can be anonymous here. We'll see how this goes.
Today's post is more of a contemplative post than anything. It's about family law, and in specific, marriage between same sex individuals.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) says "No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship." See me for the cite if necessary.
So we were talking about it, in the context of same sex marriages. And we agreed that the law says that the marriage of a (wo)man with another (wo)man may not be recognized in many other states. And this is true. Same sex marriages are not usually recognized in other states. But the cases about this have interesting results, if you play with them.
A man may not marry a man. This is given. But what about a man marrying a post-op transexual female (meaning he became a she)? Well, case law suggests that this cannot be either. The courts rest mostly on the idea that your sex at birth fixes your sex in terms of which sex you can marry. SO even if you switch genders, if your original gender was male, you cannot marry a male. But what about...
a post-op transsexual male (she became he) marrying a male
a man marrying a woman and then becoming (via operation) a woman
a hermaphrodite at birth who was made to be a man marrying a woman
THese examples sound silly, but think about them. DOMA was created to protect man-woman marriages, by shooting down same sex marriages. But the implications make the law seem almost useless. The only reason that the law has been as it is for so long is because, as my teacher said, "Law is way behind Science." Law hasn't had to confront a case like those mentioned above. And when it does, it will be interesting to see how they try and justify DOMA.
Anyhow, just thought I would share this with you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Now I must discuss the biological implications of these silly laws. You have Klinefelter's Syndrome and have XXY (or XXXY, XXXXY etc) and still look like a man and be able to function like a man. These men are however normally sterile but have fully functioning sex organs. This is also fairly common in men, being estimated at 1/1000 meaning a whole heck of a lot of guys in the US alone have this.
You can also have Turner Syndrome which is essentially XO meaning you only have one working X chromosome. In this case again you are generally sterile but also don't exhibit fully feminine features. This is somewhat less common at 1/2000 and 1/3000 births depending on who your asking.
Yet another exception is XYY-trisomy which is XYY which results in a generally taller than average male who is able to sexually reproduce. This is however thought to be very rare as it is only discovered with genetic testing as the men seem to be normal and do go in to fertility clinics often so it is not discovered.
Next up for strange defects is Triple X syndrome which results in a tall slender generally attractive and sensitive femal who is reproductivly normal. Again, detection is rare and so it is unknown how common this actually is.
Then there are Intersex people or people exhibiting both secondary sex characterists (sometimes called hermaphrodites and pseudohermaphrodites though this is no longer PC). This can happen in a number of ways but one of the ways most pertinant to this law is a child with XY who's SRY gene fails to function or be present. In this case you will have a genetically male child who will develop into a potentially 'normal' female.
These are all exceptions tot he normal 'biological' definition of male and female. A male is defined as an XY individual and a female an XX individual. But clearly more is considered as we still call an XYY person a male because they look like a male. But in the case of intersexuals you have a genetic male who looks like a femal and is probably called a female (we will not go into sex changes and intersexual people here right now).
Most of these people do not know that they have these issues (some do due to other symptoms) until they find they cannot concieve and have testing done. This often means they are already married, in other words you already have same sexed marrages or marrages between people who are not traditionally men or women.
There are already 'exceptional' people getting married and no one even knew it until it was 'too late'. With so many exceptions already made, why then must we bicker about people we know are not opposit sex's getting married? In the eyes of the law we should all just be 'people' not a gender assigned to us. If we are all just people then why does it matter who we marry?
I stress the word law here in that religion has nothing to do with law. Any religion can refuse to marry to people of what they consider the same sex, but the law who should see us all as people, cannot. Any justice of the peace should marry any two persons who desire to be so, regardless of their gender appearence or genetic gender.
*I just covered the basic 'gender' exceptions, if you want to know more I can dive into my books and find you some of the more odd and rare ones.*
Post a Comment