Pacific News Service > News > Laws Can't Define 'Man' or 'Woman,' So How Can They Ban Gay Marriage?

Pacific News Service > News > Laws Can't Define 'Man' or 'Woman,' So How Can They Ban Gay Marriage?: "Laws Can't Define 'Man' or 'Woman,' So How Can They Ban Gay Marriage?
Commentary, William O. Beeman,
Pacific News Service, Feb 05, 2004
Editor's Note: Legislators' attempts to codify marriage as 'between a man and a woman' won't work, writes PNS contributor William O. Beeman. Like it or not, there is no single, clear biological, psychological or cultural definition of 'male' and 'female.' Already, courts are faltering on the ambiguity of gender.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court advisory, stating that nothing short of marriage for same-sex couples would satisfy the state constitution, has sent legislators throughout the nation as well as President Bush scrambling to define marriage as between 'one man and one woman.'

These legislative attempts are doomed, because there is no clear, scientific and strict definition of 'man' and 'woman.' There are millions of people with ambiguous gender -- many of them already married -- who render these absolute categories invalid.

There are at least three ways one might try to codify gender under law -- biologically, psychologically and culturally. On close inspection, all of them fail.

Biologically, one must choose either secondary sexual characteristics -- things like facial hair for men or breast development for women -- or genetic testing as defining markers of gender. Neither method is clear-cut. Some women show male secondary characteristics, and vice versa. Before puberty, things are not necessarily any clearer. A significant proportion of all babies have ambiguous gender development. It has been longstanding -- and now, increasingly, controversial -- medical pra"