Tuesday, 29th July 2008 - 16:56CET
Woman born a man demands right to marry
A woman, who was born a man but was legally declared female following gender reassignment surgery, filed a Constitutional application today claiming that a previous court decision stopping her from getting married was in breach of her human rights and subjected her to degrading and inhuman treatment.
Joanne Cassar explained that she was born a man and, ever since she was a child, she felt she was female. When she was old enough she had gender reassignment surgery and, some time after, the court upheld her request to alter her gender annotation to female on her birth certificate.
She eventually applied for the issuing of her marriage banns to marry her partner but the director of Public Registry objecting and she took her case to court.
On February 12, 2007, the Civil Court, ordered the director of Public Registry to issue the marriage banns for the woman after noting that the union between her - who had been recognised as a woman on her birth certificate - and her male partner did not contravene any provision of the Marriage Act.
On February 28, the director of Public Registry, in his capacity as Registrar of Marriages, filed an application, also in the Civil Court, requesting the reversal of the court decree permitting marriage banns to be issued.
In May this year, Mr Justice Joseph R. Micallef upheld the registrar’s request.
Ms Cassar has now taken her case a step further and filed a constitutional application claiming a breach of her human rights. She is arguing that she suffered from gender identity disorder which was the reason why the resorted to surgery. Maltese law did not recognise her as belonging to the post-surgery gender for all legal intents and purposes. This put her in the situation when she could not marry a man or a woman and therefore exposed her to degrading treatment and was in breach of her fundamental human right to marry.
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Who's refuting the genetic argument I simply said don't bring it on board,. What are you saying exactly that this is justifiable on the grounds that an individual has no Y chromosome? Yes, mistakes are made re gender assignment at birth but that is only part of the picture.
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Our present knowledge on DNA composition .....................allow us to determine "sexual identity" without error.
Correction, what your present knowledge of DNA allows you to assign is biological gender. There is the other pertinent question of sexual identity that does not always reflect biological gender. Don’t confuse biological gender with sexual identity. There are other psychological realities, which do not stem from the absence or presence of a Y chromosome. The argument does not rest on the probability that the person in question was born a girl but that she has been reassigned gender that matched her sexual identity. She has every right to marriage and I hope that Maltese society is not so bigoted as to think otherwise. Though Dorianne Bugeja is intent on being main cheerleader for that minority. Malcolm Tortell’s answer sums it up succinctly.
Might I suggest you familiarise with current research which shows quite clearly that the sexuality/gender of the parents, be they adoptive or natural has no bearing on the quality of upbringing. What is important is that the parents provide a nurturing and loving environment. This is something that anyone of any orientation can provide.
As a corollary its not like heterosexual couples who raise their own children have a 100% success rate is it?
your so called open minded seems to not tolerate other people opinion.
Maybe I didn't explain myself right, I don't mind them getting married infact I wish them happiness. What I do not agree is if they will ask for adoption.
In my opinion, children should be raised by a father and mother thus not to
disorient their upbringing after all children are created by a male and a female and not two woman or two males.
So please put the children's interest first and not your personal needs.
Why not? Do you have a reason for your position ?
This is not a text book issue. This is ongoing medical research and clinical practice.
You are referring to chromosome abnormality, which is relatively very rare. A single point mutation in one of the genes on otherwise perfectly healthy sex chromosomes is all it takes to distort genitalia appearance, leading to error in sex identification.
Of course, there is the emotional aspect. But we can hardly ever solve anything through emotions.
"Biological gender is not always congruent with sexual identity ..."
You make this admission, yet you refuse to accept what you call "the genetic argument".
Our present knowledge on DNA composition of the XX and XY chromosomes, and of the genes on these chromosomes, allow us to determine "sexual identity" without error.
The title of this article "Woman born a man ..." clearly shows that there was an error in the way the sex of the baby was identified. This is a common occurrence in medical practice, even today. The scientific community provides advice to the medical profession on this issue.
One cannot deny that the error is no less serious than saying that the earth is flat just because we refuse to look through a telescope.
My hunch is that Joanne was born a girl, not a man. If this turns out to be the case, which it probably is, then it is no longer a matter of "rights" but one of justice. Her case would be on a par with that of forensic medicine, and the onus would then be entirely on the Malta courts.
If you think that people fit into clear-cut cases of either XX or XY, you need to go beyond textbooks. Quite apart from the various other combinations such as presence of XYY chromosomes, XXY chromosomes (Klinefelter Syndrome), a single X chromosome (Turner syndrome) or three X chromosomes (47,XXX karyotype), there is more to sex/gender than the presence or absence of the Y chromosome.
In a person you have the external physical characteristics such as the genitalia (which are sometimes so vague that doctors are unable to determine the gender of a baby at birth), the Y chromosome, and the personal feelings of the person in question.
In Joanne's case, her particular circumstances mean she won't be able to have children, but that is something I'm sure she's taken into consideration. I see no reason why she should be denied the right to marry.
Joanna I wish you luck and hope that your dream will come true.
Evereybody seems to want more rights, and the more rights they get, the more they seem to demand. Society has been depleted and family valkues left to rot. The result is that we have sacrificed the backbone of our society, teh family and it's values. If homosexual or gender -uncertain individuals want to obtain more rights, this shoule be done in a democratic form, not through minority rule.
I say enough of these drmatic cases, our lawcourts are brim-full with pending and more important cases, and let's get on with our lives!
There are several genes on these two chromosomes. It only takes a single mutation on any of these genes critical to sex determination to cause an ambiguity, leading to a mistaken sex identification after the baby is born.
My guess would be that Joanne has the XX chromosomes. This would mean that not only she has been failed by the legal system, but more importantly she has been let down by the medical profession when she was a baby. Of course, the truth would be profound, and very personal to Joanne.
My conviction is that what Joanne is suffering now, in 2008 Malta, is not different from what Galileo suffered in 1600 Italy when he put everyone on notice that moons revolved around Jupiter.
To hell with all those who try to choke others because they go to church , they think that they have any right on everybody else.
Good Luck Joanne!! Stand for your rights!!!
@ Dorianne Bugeja: I guarantee (if you broaden your knowledge to what happens away from these shores) you that children raised by these people (as you pointed out) would be far off better than those growing up in "normal" (for you) families or single parent families. You narrow mentality is simply pathetic.
@Joe Spiteri Bailey: "I can't believe it's not butter"......wakey wakey...have you ever heard about biodiversity even in human beings and about a whole range of spectrum of sexual orientations?
@M Tabone: Imagine yourself born as a man but inside you feel to be a complete woman. Isn't this psychologically devastating? what's wrong in gender reassignment surgery? Be informed.
By the way is is my own personal opinion about gender reassignment surgery. I feel it is something wrong, but thats my opinion. I do not hate these people, I just don't agree with what they have done to themselves.
I still would consider Joanne to be a male, but legally through law, nothing should be stopping Joanne from marrying. Joanne is after all seen as a female by law.
I just don't understand what kind of mind can cause a person to be ashamed or pursue to be changed into the opposite gendre. Strange as it is, no matter how many people are against it, by law Joanne should be allowed to have a normal life as a female. In the end it's nothing to do with gay rights since she is legally classified as a female.
There are no 'these people' Ms Bugeja; just people.
Good luck Joanne
Why not? We all have a right to choose and live happily in the first place. It's about time current legislation on this issue (as well as on other issues) is revised to cater for the minority too.
Gay persons too need to have the right to get married the state is not the church....
this is something that I never agree to.