QuoteOn National Freedom to Marry Day, all Marriage Equality USA® Chapters and Member Organizations will participate in Marriage Equality USA's National Freedom to Marry Events. Marriage Equality USA® has also partnered with Join the Impact for this national event. Thursday, February 12, 2009, at local marriage counters in cities all over the country, same-sex couples will request marriage licenses at their local County Clerk's Offices to raise awareness of the harms and impact the inability to marry causes on their families.

Since 2001, Marriage Equality USA® chapters have engaged in these annual marriage counter actions to render visible the discrimination that is enforced every day. It is an affront to our basic dignity as fellow human beings when same-sex couples are turned away from the marriage counter, but it gives us the opportunity to tell our stories and show that we live in every community and want to honor and protect our families like everyone else. Everyone who supports marriage equality is welcomed to attend and support this event.

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I posted the following comment:

QuoteTransgenders can play, too!  (0.00 / 0)

Transgendered persons should also participate. Here's what I can do (I'm post-op MtF...)

>I have copies of my original birth certificate, my court-ordered name change, my court-ordered change of gender and issuance of new birth certificate, and my latest birth certificate.

>I go up to the counter and ask them who I should marry - a man or a woman? I then spread the documents out (all legal,) so the clerk can make his or her determination. I do not deny that I was born with a male body.

With luck, this may involve several clerks and supervisors trying to pick out the right answer.

If I have time, I repeat this at another county clerk's office. Maybe I'll get a different answer this time.

It would be even better with media coverage in attendance...

If you like this idea, please spread it far and wide. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I love your comment Karen!

Z

Karen, if we take your idea and act on it here's a possible scenario - The knuckleheads will realize there's confusion in the current law.  A man can become a woman and that woman can marry a man?  OMG!  What will we do?  How about if we make it simple and say TG folks can't get married if they have changed their name to a gender opposite their birth gender or had surgery to change their gender.  Or how about if we just take away their ability to change their birth certificate completely? 

We have to remember there are a lot of people out there who think we are the big bad wolf and we'll eat their young if we're allowed to roam free.  Many of them have no idea the gender marker can be changed on a birth certificate after GRS.  And many of those same people will never refer to you by your identified gender if they know your history.  Call them boneheads or knuckleheads or whatever but there are enough of them out there to cause us a problem.

Remember Prop 8

Julie

Julie;

I respect your position.  I think there needs to be a discussion on this whole idea.

My position has risks associated with it.  It also has rewards.

Your position has risks associated with it.  It also has rewards.

What is risked and what is gained by each position?  What are the possible unintended consequences?  Can we foresee all the unintended consequences?

I'd like to have a discussion.  But this topic is conjoined with the perennial out-or-stealth zombie-topic (it refuses to die...)

Anybody care to add to the discussion?

Karen

(edit: corrected your name, Julie.  My humble apologies.  Karen)

Quote from: Karen on February 09, 2009, 06:12:22 PM
Anybody care to add to the discussion?

My partner and I could get married because of our legal sexes, although were I to legally change genders down the road we could only get a civil union in our state. We've been together a dozen years, but made a decision years ago to not marry until all can marry.

I think the same sex marriage issue is an important one for trans people. In many states a marriage is invalid once one of the partners legally changes sex.

Z

I think your idea Karen is very useful in conversation, blogs, and protest situations.  I'm not sure that I see a direct benefit to confuse government workers. They are not the ones we should be targeting. We want to change the law.

BTW, I have used this since you mentioned it to me some time ago several times as comments to news articles I don't like.

Cindi

Zythyra, I have not heard of any marriage in the US that has been nullified by one person changing genders. There have been cases where a person who has changed genders and married the opposite gender and was denied marriage.

"Or how about if we just take away their ability to change their birth certificate completely?"


we already have this law in affect in the State of  Transphobia, they will staple an "amended abstract" of your bc to it, and if you need it you must ask for the "amended abstract"......