Defense of Marriage Nonsense
Eric at Classical Values notes that California’s conservatives are proposing yet another defense of marriage initiative that attempts to define sexual identity through genetic testing; he quickly reduces the effort to the absurdity that it is.
As he notes, legal “man + woman” marriage in the initiative could be made between a transexual who was male and has operations to “become female” and then marries a lesbian, with the appearance that it is two women getting married when the state has declared, via genetic testing, that they are a traditional married couple. Likewise, a transexual who “becomes male” but is genetically female would be allowed to marry a man, giving the appearance that Bob and John are male and female, not two dudes who are married.
Unless we start regulating names, the parties can for all appearances be a same sex marriage couple, even down to names (“You mean Bob is not a man?”) Historically, you can change your name to anything you like, as long as it isn’t for fraud, a personal freedom we should maintain. I shudder at the thought of an agency like the DMV reviewing all the names for “gender appropriateness”.
And after this passes, there would be created for the first time a protected species of lucky, legal gay couples in California. Think about it: any man in California who found a woman who had changed her sex to male could marry “her” — even though both would look and act like men, and while they would be be visually undistiguishable from other gay male couples, they’d be permitted to marry for the first time under California law. Ditto for lesbians who want to marry; they need only find a post operative male-to-female willing to exchange vows.
Transsexuals would be allowed to marry after their sex changes, but only in a homonormative manner.
If you don’t think it will happen, you don’t know California.
Libertarian Eric is right. I think I’ll sit this one out, and if it makes the ballot, vote “no”. Government doesn’t do well when they get this entwined into individual human lives; let’s get back to securing liberty, providing for common defense, and promoting the general welfare of our citizens.
