Can men marry if they have ovaries?

[donsu]

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/health/15712705.htm


Recent efforts to pass amendments that define marriage as a union between a "man" and a "woman" are going to run into more than just political opposition.

Scientists are contending there's no clear definition of the gender divide.

-snip-

Alice Dreger, part of the medical humanities and bioethics faculty at Northwestern University, has also written on the flaws of the "one man and one woman" equation.

-snip-

You might think you could get out a microscope and use chromosomes, defining men as having an X and a Y, women as having two X's. It's simple enough except some people have just a single X, or XXY, or XYY. There are XX men, XY women, and people with a "mosaic" of genetically male and female cells.

As an activist for the intersex community, Dreger often gets asked for advice and recently heard from a 19-year-old man whose medical workup revealed he had two X chromosomes and ovaries.

-snip-

As for marriage reform, she wonders who her politicians think she should marry. "I have testicles and a vagina. I have an F on my birth certificate but my bloodwork says my cells are all XY."

Twenty states have already passed constitutional amendments to restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman, and eight more will be voting on it this November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But Pranzarone predicts that once lawyers start representing intersex cases, these laws will fall apart.
-----------------------------------------


and all the hormones in meat (and now in every body of water in america) fish in the Potomac River are showing scrambled sex organs and american men meat eaters are growing breasts. I'm not joking about man breasts. that term 'man breasts' is a new term. back in the day even fat men didn't have breasts, they had beefy chests or if really fat had rolls of fat, not breasts.

[valerief]

1. I don't think you're supposed to use that evolutionary-type science

to determine who is a man or woman. I think only god can do that, and preachers speak for god.

***That will be the irrational rationale.***

[donsu]

2. but will preacher speech fly in Court?

nt

[valerief]

13. Well, as long as we pledge allegiance under god and have

*in god we trust* on our currency, anything is possible. The courts ain't what they used to be.

But how would I know? I'm just a knucklehead who still can't understand how Bush/Cheney/Frist/Santorum/Dobson/Robertson/Falwell/Coulter can appeal to anyone with half a brain.

[drm604]

3. This is the perfect way to fight it.

I'm sure that most people aren't even aware of this type of ambiguity. As well as winning court battles it may actually open some minds (although some will remain forever closed).

[LeftyMom]

4. Them folks is sinnin' just by being,

After all, when Gawd sent the animals to Noah to climb up on the ark, he sent a boy animal and a girl animal and replenished each kind from thier offspring (which goes to show you that THE LAWD is okay with inbreeding.) Did he send any boy lions with ovaries or girls with pentorises? No! Gawd has a plan, and these people ain't built according to Gawd's blueprints. Besides, if you ain't really a boy or a girl, don't that mean you're gay no matter who you wanna hump? They's goin' to Hell, lessn' they realize they can't make godly babies and ain't supposed to have relations at all, and get to prayin for Gawd to bring them into harmony with his plan for Creation.

Oh, and that's :sarcasm: in case anybody didn't notice.

[unblock]

5. "intersex people are the devil's work"

at least, that will be the way the wingnuts dismiss yet another attempt to inject logic into an issue that's only about religious bigotry.

[MountainLaurel]

9. They'll blame it on the "sins of the fathers"

God was obviously punishing the parents for something they did, to have a child born like that.

Seriously though, I knew a lot of churches back in WV that wouldn't allow women to cut their hair above their shoulders or wear pants or allow men to have anything but the regulation fundie cut because it was a sin for men to look like women and vice versa. I wonder what those folks would do with an intersex child (and considering the pollutants in the rivers there, that ain't a remote possibility). Probably leave them out on a mountain to die, or something equally loving or compassionate.

[LeftyMom]

10. Or go with the 50's solution

Surgical assignment of gender ASAP after birth and then nobody ever speaks of the matter again, except perhaps to tell the teenage child why they have to take thier hormones.

[ck4829]

6. This is what I've been saying for several years now

[lostnfound]

7. Me too. Brought the question up to my 'fundy' assistant

She stared and moved on.

[Critters2]

8. I have a good friend who's intersex

It's a terribly difficult life, but it does point out the great variety of human life and experience. We don't fit into neat boxes. Which really destroys some people's facile worldviews.

[drm604]

11. "Which really destroys some people's facile worldviews."

Exactly. This is why this type of information needs publicity. Maybe this is something progressives should be doing - finding and publicizing undeniable real world ambiguities that flatly contradict the worldviews of narrow-minded people. They hate the idea of "gray areas" and in fact I've had conversations where they railed against the very idea of gray areas. It makes them very uncomfortable which, IMHO, means we're touching on things that raise uncomfortable doubts in their minds. We need to raise those doubts in ways that make them difficult for people to deny.

They can try to denigrate people who claim to be trapped in a body of the wrong sex because there's no obvious physical evidence for their claims (I think that there most likely are physical differences in the brain). The same goes for homosexuality. But it's impossible to deny the existence of people born with ambiguous genitalia or unusual numbers of X or Y chromosomes. How can they rail against them without seeming completely heartless and uncaring towards people who have an obvious problem that they obviously haven't brought on themselves?

Sure there are some that will continue being cruel and heartless no matter what, but I have to believe that there are a large number who would be decent caring people without their warped worldviews.

[Triana]

12. Ma Nature Subverts the Dominant Paradigm...

...Mwahahahaaaaaaaaaa!!

Men in gov't had better quit trying to control her - lest they find themselves in a nasty tangle.