Hello, all - I have a question that I am hoping you can help me with.
My husband is ftm. When we met, he had been living officially full-time as male for a few years, but really, he had essentially been living full-time in every way but pronouns since he was a toddler. He has now been on testosterone injections for about four years. He changed his name legally about three years ago. He had top surgery about a year and a half ago, we are a few months away from hysterectomy, and below-the-belt surgery is not something that he is interested in. He has changed his driver's license, social security card, and has changed the gender marker and name on his birth certificate. We were legally married in a state that does not allow any sort of same-sex union about a year ago. I am a cisgendered woman.
My husband is not out as ever having been anything but male to anyone at all other than his family, and only then because it is unavoidable. He passes perfectly. My family does not know, our friends do not know, our church does not know, his work does not know, the reverend who married us did not know. If he were of a mind to "come out," I would support him in that, but there is nothing he wants less and I don't anticipate that that will ever change. In our eyes, once the hysterectomy is out of the way, and really, basically, now - he will not be transitioning, he will not be ftm, he will not be trans - he will simply be a man. A man who has low testosterone and gets injections, same as my cisgendered father does. We both have great respect for the "activist" types who are willing to share their stories so that others know they are not alone and so that the path to transition is not so murky, but he's just not one of them. He says that he didn't go through all of this to be betwixt and between, he went through it to be a man, and now he is, the end.
We are now working on starting a family. Wouldn't you know that of all things, I'm the one with the fertility problem. We've been trying to conceive using inseminated sperm from a donor who is closely related to him for ten months, and I've been diagnosed with a fertility issue that causes me to not ovulate a lot of the time. It's being treated, but with minimal success, and we have about another year before the donor is relocating to another state. At that point, we've agreed to try for one more year with frozen sperm and if that fails, begin the adoption process.
It had never occurred to me that this actually may be an issue - we're not technically a GLBTQ couple in the eyes of the law, as everything for him is changed. But as I'm reading about international adoption, I'm thinking about fingerprints. My husband served in the military under his old name - is that going to come up? Is this something that we will need to disclose even though we live, completely and utterly, privately, publicly, and legally as a married heterosexual couple? There is precious little information about this specifically online, and I was hoping that someone here might know. Has anyone been through this, or looked into it far enough to know how this plays out? Your insight is very much appreciated.
