Change of Sex Designation on Transsexuals’ Birth Certificates: Public Policy and Equal Protection

It may come as a surprise that some same-sex marriages currently exist in the United States. These marriages are not the result of judgments declaring the denial of same-sex marriage unconstitutional nor are they Vermont civil unions or marriages in Massachusetts: they are the result of a man marrying a male-to-female transsexual or a woman marrying a female-to-male transsexual. These marriages are only same-sex in the sense that both the husband and the wife had the same sex marked on their birth certificate at the time of their birth. However, the transsexual partners in these relationships have undergone extreme psychological and medical treatments and surgeries and eventually had their birth certificates amended or reissued to reflect the “new” sex, the original sex on the birth certificate being deemed a “mistake.”