(bar AMB)
Gerri Buchanan is dressed for a night on the town.
Her fingernails are freshly painted, and her makeup is just so.
There's just one unusual thing about Gerri.
Like most of the other high-heeled patrons in this bar, she's a man.
**002 143 we're guys that like to wear frilly things (laughs) feminine things
As a cross-dresser, Gerri pushes the boundary between male and female.
She says gender isn't a matter of black and white.
**004 143 there's lots of us who don't quite fit the gender we were born into. we're wired a little differently. and that's a struggle.
Gerri's simply defying a dress code that helps us tell men from women.
Others take it further.
They undergo surgery and hormone treatments to change their gender.
Take a New Hampshire woman we'll call Ann.
Ann was born male, but she says as far back as she can remember, she never felt male.
**when I was in first grade I thought I was a girl. I had to be told I wasn't.
As a thirteen year old boy, Ann would steal girls clothes and sneak into the bathroom to try them on.
It was an impulse she feared and resisted.
As a young man, Ann got married, hoping that would be a cure.
It wasn't.
Therapy and medication didn't change things either.
Ann says felt trapped in the wrong body, a body that might betray her at any moment.
**146 129 I was always afraid I would say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, cross my legs the wrong way or hold a cigarette like a girl. // I was afraid if people found out I'd be shunned, I'd lose my job, lose my friends.
After suffering a stress-induced heart attack at age 45, Ann began seeing a gender therapist.
She decided to have a sex change operation.
And she says the difficult transition's been worth it to finally feel at home in her body.
But if Ann's gender situation feels clearer to her now, it's become murkier in the eyes of the law.
Ann is attracted to men.
She says she might want to remarry someday.
**51 115 if I should meet someone and want to get married, I wouldn't want the state telling me I'm still considered a male and can't get married.
People who have changed their genders have always been in a precarious situation as far as marriage.
Some advocates worry the debate over gay marriage will increase their difficulties.
**36 00 transgender people are afraid of getting caught in the crossfire
Shannon Minter is a lawyer at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
He himself is a female-to-male transsexual.
He says so far none of the laws banning gay marriage has specifically targeted people who've undergone sex change.
But he's concerned the laws are creating an atmosphere of intolerance.
**they do afect the environment, by pumping it up so courts are making sure they don't do anything to quote unquote condone gay marriage, it skews the way courts evaluate cases.
Nobody knows exactly how many transsexuals there are in New Hampshire or in the United States.
But it's clear there are married transgendered people all over the country.
Some change their sex before they marry.
Others make the transition during their marriage, with the support of their spouse.
The problems tend to arise during divorce.
Take the high-profile case of Michael Kantares, a female-to-male transsexual in Florida.
Kantares married a woman who knew he'd had a sex change.
After ten years and two children, they split up.
Karen Doering is Kantares' lawyer.
***they went thru divorce and she decided to challenge validity of marriage, saying since he was a female at birth the marriage is invalid and he has no right to custody or visitiation, that he's a legal stranger to the children he's raised since birth.
Kantaras won his first round in court.
He was granted primary custody of the children after a judge ruled he was legally a man.
The case is now on appeal.
Other courts have come to the opposite conclusion.
Rulings in Texas and Kansas have held that you are the gender you're born with, regardless of any surgery or hormone treatment you undergo later.
But transsexual lawyer Shannon Minter says even that's not a clear standard.
He points out a small number of babies are born every year with mixed
chromosomes or
ambiguous sex organs.
***you can't use genetics because between 2 and 4 pct of the population has nonstandard genetic composition that would fail such a test. tests focused on genitalia don't work because there's all kinds of med conditions with ambiguous or nonstandard genitals and you could see this would lead to humiliating tests. we're not gonna have genital inspections to determine someone's legal gender
Defining gender, Minter argues, is simply impossible.
Any way you do it, you'll get unintended results.
Consider that case in Texas.
After the court ruled sex change operations don't count, a transsexual woman married another woman on the courthouse steps.
She was free to do so, because the court considered her a man.
Backers of Defense of Marriage laws say a few exceptions like those shouldn't stand in the way of good public policy.
Matthew Spalding is a fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
He says the courts can sort out the details.
10 154 the purpose of law is to make general laws that are generally applicable. in the case of more complicated cases they'll have to be adjudicated, and you might have some unusual circumstances.
Spalding says defense of marriage laws are desigend to uphold traditional families.
He insists they aren't designed to attack nonconforming ones.
we don't disband those households. there's something unique about the marital household that one can reasonably say justifies protection and special priviliges
Jordan Lawrence at the Alliance Defense Fund is skeptical of claims that transsexuals can’t be helped by any other means than changing their gender.
**200 I think we’ve been sold a bill of goods and what people need is to be helped and not encouraged to act out some masquerade.
He says endorsing transsexualism will open the door to all kinds of undesirable behavior.
**16 200 there’s people who believe they’re both sexes or animals trapped in people’s bodies or whatever. this will not end if we use gender as some sort of arbitrary social construct that has no relation to real life.
(bar AMB)
While the debate rages, transsexuals in New Hampshire watch from the sidelines.
Many were reluctant to go on tape for this story, even if they are "out" to their family, friends and coworkers.
That limits their ability to lobby for themselves.
One transgendered woman at this bar said, "90 percent of us are in the closet. We can't really call our congressman."
Some transsexuals hope gay marriage will eventually win out, giving them more security.
Others fear a backlash.
But above all, they say they want to go about their lives in peace.
For nhpr news I'm
