What are Current Gay and Lesbian Legal Issues?
This is a transcript of a podcast posted June 11, 2006.
 Hello. We’re speaking with Attorney Emily Doskow, an expert on lesbian and gay legal rights, and the editor of A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples, from Nolo.
NOLO: Emily, there’s a great movie called Normal, about a rural couple that’s been married for twenty-five years. Then, one day, the husband announces he plans to change his sex. Legally, what happens in situations like this, when a married couple becomes a same-sex couple? Is the marriage over?
EMILY DOSKOW: The marriage isn’t legally over if they were opposite sex when they got married; their marriage will still be valid after one partner transitions. It's different if the partners are same-sex, and then one partner transitions so they become opposite sex, and the courts are split on that about whether a marriage would be valid that was done after a transition. Some courts say that the sex that the person was at birth is the sex that they stay, and so they’re still the same-sex couple that can’t have a valid marriage, and some states say that if they become opposite sex then their marriage is valid.
NOLO: In your book, there’s a discussion about a debate among gay activists as to whether the pursuit of marriage rights is a proper goal for same-sex couples. Considering all the rights that are denied same-sex couples -- that is, compared to married couples -- what’s the thinking behind opposing marriage rights for same-sex couples?
EMILY DOSKOW: I think it comes from a bunch of different places. One is a political stance that says, “Nobody should get married. Marriage is an institution of the state that’s oppressive, and everybody should be able to define their legal and financial relationships however they want to.”
Another is that it’s just too much too soon, and people aren’t ready for it, and it causes a backlash, and a lot of negative, you know, all of these anti-same-sex marriage laws that we’re seeing everywhere.
Another is that it sort of closes doors to alternative types of relationships by … the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] community. So, for example, in situations where a lesbian couple asks a man to be a sperm donor, they want all three of them to be parents, and that’s something that has happened in the past, so that a child can have two female parents, one male parent. And courts have actually granted adoptions where it ends up that a child has three legal parents. That’s getting more and more uncommon because the structure of domestic partnerships, marriage, civil unions, all of that, is so much like marriage that courts are sort of becoming more reluctant to do things that are sort of outside of that mainstream, so that’s another argument against it.
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