And… Minnesota gives me the best 44th birthday present!
Tag: marriage
#13?: NZ
Posted by – April 17, 2013
New Zealand has made same sex marriage legal. They’re the 13th country in the world to do so. & Guess what? The US isn’t one of them.
(I can’t quite sort if they are the 13th or 14th. Seeing conflicting #s from good sources, so here’s a list.)
- Argentina
- Belgium
- Canada
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Portugal
- Spain
- South Africa
- Sweden
- Uruguay
- New Zealand
Why Trans People Need Marriage Equality, Too
Posted by – March 30, 2013
So it turns out that Thomas Beatie is not being granted his divorce, for the worst possible reason: his marriage has been declared invalid, and a marriage that never existed can’t end in divorce.
This is one of the many reasons trans people need marriage equality: so that we do not have to exist in a this legally unclear environment where a judge can decide whether or not we were ever married, even if we were for 20 years, like Christie Lee Littleton was.
That said, Beatie’s case is a little different – not that it does him much good – in that what Beatie had or had not done to establish his identity as male at the time of the marriage was unclear:
“The decision here is not based on the conclusion that this case involves a same-sex marriage merely because one of the parties is a transsexual male, but instead, the decision is compelled by the fact that the parties failed to prove that (Thomas Beatie) was a transsexual male when they were issued their marriage license,” he wrote in Friday’s ruling.
What’s more interesting to me as a gender studies person is this detail:
Beatie is eager to end his marriage, but the couple’s divorce plans stalled last summer when Gerlach said he was unable to find legal authority defining a man as someone who can give birth.
precisely because it involves the definition of a “man” – which, as any good gender studies student knows, is a cultural construct in the first place. (So is male, but far fewer people seem to understand that sex, or biological gender, is also culturally constructed.) As a feminist, I’m particularly concerned when the ability or inability to bear children starts getting involved in definitions of who is or isn’t a woman or a man.
But same sex marriage would, at least in some way, prevent this kind of bullshit at least in part, as it wouldn’t matter if Beatie was or was not a man at the time of his marriage. The issue of whether he could be a man and also give birth to his own children is, effectively, a different issue altogether.
(Interestingly, Beatie lives in AZ, where he could also, very shortly, be facing the fact that he may be legally required to use the ladies’ room, depending on what it does or doesn’t say on his birth certificate.)
Howard University Files Amicus Brief on Behalf of Same Sex Marriage
Posted by – March 4, 2013
Wow, this is cool news. Howard University’s Law School has filed an amicus brief in support of same sex marriage. (An amicus brief is filed by an amicus curiae, or “someone who is not a party to a case who offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties to assist a court. . . a way to introduce concerns ensuring that the possibly broad legal effects of a court decision will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case.)
from the Summary of Argument:
Today, public debate over interracial unions ha sgenerally died since this Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967 such that we are now long past the time when anyone would seriously claim that race-based marriage equality threatens the moral fabric of our civilization, is contrary to nature, or is harmful to children. Yet these arguments, however discredited, have not disappeared altogether.Instead, they have been recycled to oppose same-sex marriage.This brief demonstrates that there is nothing new about the arguments marshaled to oppose same-sex marriage; the very same arguments – eventually categorically rejected in Loving v.Virginia — were assembled in opposition to interracial marriage. As a society, we have rightfully come to embrace full human dignity for interracial couples and individuals. We should do no less for same-sex couples.
To which I can only reply: YES. This is especially cool, coming as it does, from an historically black university.
Mr. & Mr.
Posted by – February 20, 2013
I so love that this guy wrote to the AP to let them know that he & his husband use the term “husband” with each other. Apparently the AP is supposed to not use the terms for same sex couples unless those people use it themselves.
So he went on record and wrote to the AP to let them know that in his case, and in his husband’s case, they should go ahead and use “husband”.
I understand that the AP will only refer to my lawfully wedded husband, Michael Gallagher, as my “husband” if you are aware that we have regularly used those terms.
As this determination is being made on a case-by-case basis, I wanted to let you know, for your records, that we use these terms.
You can write to them to: Tom Kent, the standards editor, tkent@ap.org, [and] David Minthorn, AP stylebook editor, dminthorn@ap.org.
I really do want to write to them but I think trying to explain that we’ve gone from husband & wife to wives to sometimes just “legal spouse” – because the legally married part often needs to be underlined – might just throw the AP if they’re still pussyfooting around couples who are, and stay, the same legal gender.
And we in the trans community wonder why journalists get it wrong so often.
Why Trans Partners Should Tell Their Stories
Posted by – January 31, 2013
The other day I published a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto, who wrote a book about her marriage to and divorce from a trans woman.
I blurbed her book, let me admit up front.
I blurbed it because despite some transphobic tendencies (not respecting her ex’s change to feminine pronouns, most notably), I think it’s important that partners get their stories out there – as important as it is for trans people to do so. I’ve been enabling the latter for a long time, and I’m proud to have done so. But I see so often that partners who are having a hard time or who are bitter about a divorce or angry about transition are told – in trans community spaces – to STFU, pretty much. And that really sucks, a lot.
The thing is, nothing about her memoir struck me as patently false. I’ve known a lot of trans women and a lot of wives of trans women over the past 13 years. A LOT. And Benvenuto’s story, just as she told it, is pretty goddamned typical. I have seen behavior by trans women that is sexist, misogynist bullshit. I have seen trans women spend their kids’ college money on transition. I have seen 401Ks emptied. I have seen all of that, and more.
I have also seen the wives of transitioning women take out all their rage on their trans spouse – financially, emotionally, even physically. I have seen rage that I didn’t even know was possible in the wives of trans women. And I have seen them be unwilling to let it go.
That is, I have seen a lot of awful behavior on both sides of this coin. Trans people are not excused because they’re trans just as women are not excused because they’re women. We are all faced with loss and betrayal and heartbreak and all of the emotions that accompany those things. How you choose to express them is entirely up to you.
I can buy the argument that now is not the best time to be airing our dirty laundry in public. Maybe it is. Maybe right now is the “let’s put a good face on it so the public grants us our rights” period for trans issues. But I don’t think there ever is that time, to be honest. I think that’s the kind of thinking that results in shaming some members of a community over other members of that community.
Because, I would argue, the crap behavior of some trans women who come from lives of male privilege – & here I’m specifically talking about certain kinds of later transitioning trans women – is a fact. It’s not made up. I can promise you that. And what we want, as a community, is for trans people to be happy. For them to have people to love and who love them. For them to be accepted and loved by their families.
And transition after 20 years of marriage is very, very rarely going to make that happen. It just isn’t.
So if we as a community want trans people to be happy, people need to know what kind of devastation a late transition can cause on families and wives and communities and of course on the trans people themselves. There is so, so much pain, on everyone’s part. People need to know it. People need to transition younger so that some of this can be prevented.
That said: partners deserve to tell their stories because they’re their stories. There are other reasons, but really, that’s the nut of it. There is no saying who is “right” when it comes to he said/she said. There never is. But as far as I could tell, Sex Changes felt real. It felt hard to write. There were parts that made me cry to finally see things I’d felt in print.
So no, it’s not a perfect story. It could have been kinder, but my gut still says it was honest and that is worth having in the world. Honesty can only shed light in dark corners, and transition-fueled divorce is one of the darkest corners I know of.
Beatie Complication
Posted by – January 4, 2013
The Beaties were just trying to get divorced.
Thomas and Nancy Beatie are eager to end their nine-year marriage, but their divorce plans stalled when Maricopa County Family Court Judge Douglas Gerlach said in late June that he was unable to find any legal authority defining a man as someone who can give birth.
“Are we dealing with a same-sex marriage?” Gerlach asked. He noted Arizona has banned such marriages and refuses to accept those performed in other states. The judge added no court here is allowed to declare same-sex unions valid.
and
“What you have is a man and woman who are married, and their relationship is ending,” said Minter, who isn’t involved in the Beatie case. “And it’s no different, fundamentally, from other people in that circumstance.”
And Beatie, whom I’ve never been a gigantic fan of, redeems himself with this:
David Michael Cantor, one of Thomas Beatie’s attorneys, said it would be more financially favorable for his client if the marriage weren’t recognized by the courts, because Thomas could have to pay Nancy alimony. But Cantor said Thomas wants the divorce as an official recognition that their union was legitimate. “He loses money, but he wants to be told it’s valid,” Cantor said.
As a friend pointed out: it’s sad that he doesn’t want to pay alimony simply because it’s the right thing for a man to do in a sexist system, but at least he wants to see his marriage upheld as legitimate so as not to set a precedent (or rather, more precedent) that puts any other of our marriages at risk. Let’s hope he gets his way.
You can read the whole article here.
WI Court Refuses Domestic Partner Case
Posted by – September 17, 2012
The Wisconsin State Supreme Court today refused the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ request to certify the domestic partnership case. I’m working on getting more info, but in the meantime, the short motion is available online .
A Modest Proposal
Posted by – June 25, 2012
A trans guy puts the video of him proposing to his fiancee up on YouTube and the right wing mocks them.
But he wasn’t having it, and has responded with grace and humor and steeliness:
“To Laura Ingraham, a Fox News anchor who expressed dismay at seeing the news, we just want to say, do not worry. We will absolutely invite you to the wedding,” Scout says. As for Fischer, who Scout accidentally referred to as Miss Brianna Fischer, “We will offer you free LGBT cultural competency training.”
What his fiancee said is what drew me to this story.
There are some “people who think we’re mutants and horrible people,” said Margolies, who is executive director of the National LGBT Cancer Network in New York City. “But we’re just regular people struggling to do good in the world.”
This shouldn’t be a very difficult thing to explain, yet I find it is, time after time. The assumption that LGBTQ people – and especially trans people and their partners – are somehow living lives that are intentionally perverse is one that I find even welcoming liberals sometimes express.
We are not trying to be “out there”. We are trying to be happy, like everyone else.
A lot of the time, embracing the idea of being a pervert, or “out there”, is the only thing that keeps you sane, because otherwise, the constant judgment wears you down.
Boston DOMA Ruling
Posted by – June 1, 2012
In Thursday’s opinion, a three-judge panel in the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law couldn’t stand. Writing for the court, Judge Michael Boudin, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, observed that Supreme Court precedents limit government’s power to take action against “historically disadvantaged or unpopular” groups, including gays and lesbians. The 1996 law imposes “serious adverse consequences” on them, he wrote.
Justifications offered for the law—”defending and nurturing the institution of traditional, heterosexual marriage” and “traditional notions of morality,” among others—were insufficient to justify such discriminatory treatment, Judge Boudin said.
Six states plus the District of Columbia currently authorize same-sex marriages, and more than 100,000 same-sex couples have been married. Thirty-nine states have passed laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
WA Makes it Legal
Posted by – February 14, 2012
Governor Gregoire of Washington state signed the marriage equality bill into law tonight. That’s seven down, 43 to go.
Happy Valentine’s Day, queerios! What a lovely, romantic day to make it legal.
Breaking: CA Court Declares Same Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
Posted by – February 7, 2012
Wow.
Seven + D.C.
Posted by – February 2, 2012
Washington state’s Senate just passed a bill to make same sex marriage legal. It’s expected to pass all the way through to the Governor’s office, who is expected to sign it.
Washington will mean that seven states and D.C. have made it legal, folks. (Only 16 states had full suffrage for women before the Federal Government gave women the right to vote, and I don’t think there will be even that many before same sex marriage becomes legalized on the national level.)
Artist’s Statement
Posted by – September 22, 2011
How do you not love artists?
A sculptor has created a sculpture of her and her wife, in bed naked and embracing, as their headstone in Woodlawn cemetary. She said:
“Since all we were legally afforded was death, I was going to make the most elegant statement on our government not allowing us to marry as I could muster.”
What an amazing statement and an amazing response to discrimination.
JMG Covers Marriage
Posted by – July 24, 2011
One of my favorite bloggers, Joe.My.God, is doing only NY marriage coverage today. Great stories, videos, and photos.
Yay New York!
Posted by – July 24, 2011
It’s the first day of marriage equality in NY. These first weddings are going to be so full of joy:
How gorgeous.
Dan Savage’s Family Values
Posted by – July 4, 2011
I”m sure plenty have already seen Mark Oppenheimer’s NYT column about infidelity; in it, he talks a lot about Dan Savage, who I love (and whose show I was on back in January). Despite how angry people are about the transphobic way he talked about the dilemma’s of a trans person’s relationship with her wife & son, I can’t really disagree with it, either. (Although I’d add, too, that sometimes children and wives are transphobic; still, giving loved ones a little while to get used to the idea would be great, and may preserve some familiar relationships that will not sustain a very speedy transition.)
Still, that’s hardly what’s interesting to me about this column. First off, he said it a few years ago, & Savage has been sucking a little less on trans issues. He is, in my opinion, someone who could have been an amazing ally if he weren’t shouted at every second he said something stupid (but not necessarily hateful). He is, in my opinion, one of the people we lost with the overuse of the word transphobic, a la Christine Burns.
But what’s more interesting to me is the way this article paints him as something like a conservative. Really… Dan Savage? But yes: he’s always been pro nuclear family, that’s for sure. He’s opinionated in ways only ex-Catholics can be (she says, securely seated in her glass house). But that idea that someone could be considered conservative even as they suggest that perhaps nonmonogamy should be on the table for heterosexual marriage kind of blows my mind. I don’t disagree. I think in plenty of cases, nonmonogamy makes perfect sense. I’ve been learning a lot more about it – not just from friends who practice it, but from Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up
And that’s the kind of thing that makes my feminist hackles rise.
Because Coontz – who Oppenheimer mentions and quotes – has said elsewhere that in happy marriages, both people benefit. But in unhappy marriages, men continue to benefit, but women do much, much worse in terms of their health. Even a miserable wife feeds her husband vegetables, she once cleverly concluded in her Marriage, A History. (It’s a great book, absolutely 100% worth reading.)
So the idea of preserving a marriage simply because preserving marriage is what you’re supposed to do strikes me as kind of wrong-headed and — well, sexist. It’s not like Savage will have been the first gay man to give out sexist advice unthinkingly, but it’s still a surprise.
Pride: NY & Fair WI
Posted by – June 27, 2011
On the same weekend that New York made same sex marriage legal – with no residency requirement, no less! – I started working with Fair Wisconsin = a lovely way to spend the last weekend of Pride Month, no?
