Tina, if you can’t readily tell who’s who in the gestalt, just look at the incisors in the early and later photographs.

The concerns of the Brunners echo many of my own. In addition I think now about what will happen if or when I need to utilize an aged care facility to continue to live out my life. The decisions we make are all more or less selfish, if they involve how best to safegauard our own survival. The paper Helen authored and linked to provide a very honest self-critical account of her own personal feelings and motivations. Were they selfish because she attempted to safegaurd her relationship for difficulty? I certainly don’t think so.

Whether the Brunners represent the ideal media package for LGBT interests seems to me to expose very straightfowardly, how easily we can be diverted to focusing on differences to the exclusion of commonalities. Cara’s post recognized her own disappointments, but also emphasized the more important legal difficulties as commonality. CTG’s post is bias towards a hostile rant that exhibits very little critical thought. Her personal psychological interpretation of the photo is no more fact than my own: That the awkward pose could easily have resulted from the prompting of the staff photographer.

The article might have been less than ideal from an activist perspective, but it certainly focused on very commonly identifiable human interests about simple needs. It gives non trans people a clear path to some empathetic identification with areas of concern they also hold. Those with an open mind will maybe make the connection to their similarity in those intersts.
Without connecting the dots of our humanity, I see very little prospect for human rights being exrtended to any minority.

I thought the article highlighted what an imbroglio the legislative status quo is, and potentially is, for all marital permutations.

Despite the author’s need to yet again describe the traditional transsexual script I thought it was a good article.

Pannonica: the Brunners pitched a story to the New York Times along with Equality New Jersey, about how they have marriage rights, but maybe they might possibly perhaps lose those rights. Meanwhile most trans people don’t have access to marriage – and our rights are getting worse. As the article points out in 76′ it was all fine and dandy, then in the 90′s not so much. This article is not doing anyone any favors, and it was selfish of these folks to put themselves out there for it.

Colleen/Critical Thinking Girl is possibly the most self-involved and self-righteous person I’ve encountered (she puts me to shame).

My worry is that that the litany of legal woes described in the article is just going to make legislators and the general public throw up their collective hands and further dismiss the TG phenomenon as too much of a hassle: all the easier to marginalize and ridicule.

Why does this appear in the Fashion & Style section of the paper?

“…the storm they’re attempting to create over this has much more potential to negatively impact me, and others like me- someone who lives as a woman, with a male birth certificate, who is straight.

“The Times’ reporter went to the IRS and Social Security office for clarification on these matters – the last thing we want to be doing is haphazardly looking to these agencies to set precedents – all because an already legally married couple wants a little more piece of mind.”

The more exposure this issue receives, the more positive opinion is formed.

I wish the Brunners all the best.

Helen, don’t change your approach. Your right on the mark.

- NH resident, Live Free or Die.