PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona judge on Friday refused to grant a divorce for a transgender Arizona man who gave birth to three children after beginning to change his sex from female.

Maricopa County Family Court Judge Douglas Gerlach ruled that Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages prevents Thomas Beatie's nine-year union from being recognized as valid.

Thomas Beatie was born a woman and underwent a double-mastectomy but retained female reproductive organs and gave birth to three children.

Gerlach said he had no jurisdiction to approve a divorce because there's insufficient evidence that Beatie was a man when he married Nancy Beatie in Hawaii.

http://news.yahoo.com/judge-rejects-divorce-transgender-pregnant-man-162832151.html

Time to go back to Hawaii now for divorce I guess.... Too bad they're getting a divorce, I hope everything works out well for the kids though.

You usually can't get divorced in any state but your state of residence.  (you can typically get married anywhere)

So he probably can't go to HI to get divorced.

Why am I not surprised this was Maricopa County?

That said, I'm not surprised with the ruling.  Other states have said either chromosomes matter (FL, TX, OK) or genitals matter (NJ).  I don't know of any ruling in the USA that says someone with female anatomy can marry a female woman and not have it treated as a same sex marriage.  DOMA also allows a state to not recognize a "same sex" union, but doesn't require a uniform definition of "man" or "woman".  So a legal heterosexual marriage in one state may be an illegal gay marriage in another, under the law.

Add to that, people think that because the courthouse will give you a marriage license after you show a Driver's License or ID card, people think that this is proof that your marriage is a legal heterosexual one.  It doesn't work that way - it is based on the reality that the documents describe, not the documents themselves, even though they won't make you prove that the documents describe accurately what the state really considers important to determine if someone is a man or a woman.  So a state without legal gay marriage but uses the chromosome standard, for instance, won't care if you showed someone a birth certificate or driver's license - your marriage will be invalid if you have the same chromosomes as your spouse.  You might get a marriage license, but it's not legal - it's void and the state sees it as fraud.

It is why any heterosexual trans person who doesn't support same sex marriage is hurting themselves.  You might not be gay, but that doesn't mean the state doesn't think you are.

Quote from: Slanan on March 29, 2013, 03:53:34 PM
It is why any heterosexual trans person who doesn't support same sex marriage is hurting themselves.  You might not be gay, but that doesn't mean the state doesn't think you are.

Dang, I was just thinking today that the outcome of the same-sex marriage thing wouldn't affect us =/ Guess we need to start being more vocal with our support for them!

Quote from: Slanan on March 29, 2013, 03:53:34 PM
You usually can't get divorced in any state but your state of residence.  (you can typically get married anywhere)

So he probably can't go to HI to get divorced.

Yeah he'd have to live in Hawaii most likely for at least one year before being eligible.

I thought this was a great, and very illustrative, quote of the situation many married same-sex couples face (from page 3 of this article "From 'I Do' to I'm Done" http://nymag.com/news/features/gay-divorce-2013-3/index2.html):

Quote"Imagine you're a same-sex couple married in Washington, D.C., and taking the Amtrak from there to Boston," says Susan Sommer, director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal. "You're married in D.C.; everything's fine. Next stop Maryland, which until 2010 wouldn't treat you as married but now would. You get to Delaware, which has a civil-union law, so it treats you not as married but as a civil-union couple. Then you get to Pennsylvania, which has not been recognizing these out-of-state marriages as anything at all, and not allowing divorces, so while there you are potentially a legal stranger to your spouse. That's not a good part of your trip. New Jersey recognizes your marriage only as a civil union. Then, phew, you're in New York and you're married again; same in Connecticut. Then you get to Rhode Island: a civil-union state where the attorney general has said you are married and the government is treating you as married, but the courts have said we won't divorce you. Finally, you reach Massachusetts, and you can breathe a sigh of relief: You're married. And you can divorce. But it's a very complicated legal ride."