Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted if we are to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively mal-adjusted…

…We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soulsaving music of eternity? More than ever before we are today challenged by the words of yesterday, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

~Martin Luther King Jr., from Strength To Love

San Diego’s LGBT Weekly broke a story on Thursday that no other lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) media organization has picked up on as yet. In the somewhat awkwardly titled article HRC trans board member marries as sex opposite of post-op gender, editor-in-chief Thom Senzee reported:

Transgender Human Rights Campaign board member Meghan Stabler has married another woman in Texas by legally declaring her gender as male, a development that could be considered controversial (and perhaps hypocritical) because of Stabler’s national prominence, and because of her position at HRC as the only known trans person sitting on the board.

The lesbian couple could not legally marry in Texas as such. But by declaring male gender-identity, presumably by way of a birth certificate that reflected her gender at birth, their union is recognized by that largely far-right leaning state…

“Ouch!” on the “perhaps hypocritical” comment.

Well, as a columnist for the LGBT Weekly, I was in a meeting where the story was discussed. Whereas the reporting staff for LGBT Weekly was going to report on this, my task was to frame the concept of marriage equality in terms of trans people. My column, entitled What’s wrong with jurisdiction shopping to marry legally?, I asked the question of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people with same sex partners if they would jurisdiction shop to marry their partner:

[More below the fold.]

Lesbians, gays and bisexuals with same-sex partners can jurisdiction shop in order to marry legally. A California same-sex couple can travel to New York, D.C. or one of the other states with marriage equality to tie the knot.

Of course, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Proposition 8 mean that a Californian same-sex couple married in New York would not have their marriage recognized by the federal government or their home state.

But if there was a legal way, as early as tomorrow, to marry the same-sex partner you wanted to marry and have the federal, state and legal benefits of marriage, but the how of it might be considered “iffy” – or could be considered gaming the system – would you do it?

There’s more to the story; there’s more to the column; if interested in the contents of either one needs to follow the links.

To again quote Martin Luther King Jr.:

[W]e have cultivated a mass mind and have moved from the extreme of rugged individualism to the even greater extreme of rugged collectivism. We are not makers of history; we are made by history. Longfellow said, “In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer,” meaning that he is either a molder of society or is molded by society. Who doubts today most men are anvils and are shaped by patterns of the majority? Or to change the figure, most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society.

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody…[the] worship of size has cause many to fear being identified with a minority idea. Not a few men, who cherish lofty and noble ideals, hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different. Many sincere white people in the South privately oppose segregation and discrimination, but they are apprehensive lest they be publicly condemned.

There is a way for trans people who’ve legally changed their sex to marry a same-sex partner in a way where at least the federal government will consider the marriage a legal, heterosexual marriage. All that a trans person has to do is jurisdiction shop for the states that don’t recognize that a person can ever change the sex recorded on their birth certificates (such as Florida, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas), and then produce that document (perhaps along with a name change document) to a county registrar to obtain a marriage license — a marriage license to heterosexually marry their same-sex partner.

One can make the argument for hypocrisy for engaging in that kind of behavior as a trans public figure for denying one’s gender identity for the day one obtains one’s marriage license. However, one can just as well make the argument that engaging in that kind of behavior is, if coupled with also marrying a partner in a jurisdiction which recognizes marriage between two people of the same sex, a direct action showing — in a creative, “mal-adjusted” way — that marriage inequality is nonsensical.

Even if one interprets that Loving v. Virginia‘s identification of marriage is a only fundamental right for heterosexual people, trans people functionally don’t have that fundamental right. This is because some states don’t recognize change of sex documentation from other jurisdictions — to include states, districts, territories, and foreign governments — so a heterosexual marriage in one U.S. jurisdiction is a same-sex marriage in another jurisdiction.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

To quote Mara Keisling of the National Center For Transgender Equality:

Suddenly, because of same-sex marriage, the government felt like it had a bigger interest than ever before in knowing who’s a man and who’s a woman.

And…

Every trans person who’s in a relationship, regardless of what their gender is or ever was they’re either in a same-sex relationship or in an opposite sex relationships that somebody could claim was a same-sex relationship.

And, they do.

In my mind, it’s highly likely that Meghan Stabler is now an historic figure in trans civil rights activism. By engaging in a direct action that creates new tension in an LGBT community push for marriage equality for LGBT community members, I believe she’s likely on the leading edge of what it means to be a civil rights activist.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s too easy to continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability; it’s too easy to not risk criticism and abuse by being too well-adjusted to the oppressing power of government sanctioned discrimination; it’s too easy to listen to focus groups that tell us our best sell to the general public requires us to only make the assimilationist argument that gay and lesbian people are just like heterosexual couples in wanting to be able to marry. Marriage equality is about so much more than that, and for the audiences of the LGBT community and broader American society, Meghan Stabler has demonstrated that to us.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) now is faced with an opportunity to listen to the beat of a distant drum; to publicly own that marriage equality is a fully LGBT community issue. And too, the organization has an opportunity to publicly own that even though marriage equality issues of trans people overlap significantly with those of their non-trans lesbian, gay, and bisexual community siblings, there are some trans-specific issues related to marriage equality that are trans alone. One is how trans people don’t universally experience legal acceptance of their legal sex when trans people seek to marry their partners. Another is how trans people can jurisdiction shop for marriage equality is different than how lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who wish to marry same-sex partners can shop for marriage equality. The broader point is that the entire LGBT community shares the commonality of needing marriage equality.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

The HRC is now left, by the direct action of one of their board members, with what Cesar Chavez might have called an awesome opportunity to talk about marriage equality in a trans inclusive way.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

The HRC can choose to be a thermometer that records or registers the temperature of majority opinion, or choose to be a thermostat that transforms and regulates the temperature of American society. As an organization that identifies itself as the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, I’m optimistically hoping that the HRC will choose to be a thermostat. To do less would give into the urge to be too well-adjusted to the discrimination found in broader American society; to do less would be to be an organization of good people engaging in appalling silence.

~~
Update: An trans point of view — in opposition to mine — from Kelli Busey of Planet Transgender: Post Op Transgender Woman Megan Stabler becomes Man Again to Marry. As I more than implied above in my piece, there’s definitely more than one other way to interpret Meghan Stabler’s action.

Meghan Stabler has definitely put the subject of marriage equality, as well as the subject of sex and gender integrity, into discussion.

~~
Further reading:
* TS-SI: Marriage Among the Forbidden Class
* First Things: Surgical Sex
* Harry Benjamin: The Transsexual Phenomenon
* Supreme Court Of The State Of Kansas: In The Matter Of The Estate Of Marshall G. Gardiner, Deceased
* Press For Change: Texas: Case of Littleton v. Prange (1999) (Text Of Appeals Court Decision)

~~
Related:
* Question At The Marriage Chapel: “Are you a transsexual?”
* One’s Gender Identity Isn’t Societal Perception Of It; Marriage Equality Isn’t Just A GLB Issue