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8 | Out in the Mountains |December 2000
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out in the Mountains welcomes your letters. Although we will
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policy stated in the masthead.

VCU grateful

We just want to thank the
hundreds of volunteers who
worked long and hard, day and
night, over the past months to
protect our civil union law in
the November election. Thanks
to everyone’s hard work, most
Vermonters expressed support
for the law at the polls, and
over 60 percent voted for pro-
civil union gubernatorial can-
didates. It’s clear that, regard-
less of how folks feel about
civil unions, a strong majority
of Vermonters are ready to
move on to other issues and
don’t want to see our legisla-
ture spend another session
bogged down in this divisive
issue.

It’s dangerous to single out
individuals for special thanks,
because so many folks went
above and beyond, but we’d
like to acknowledge one partic-
ularly special ‘person. Since
June, Jakki Flanagan has
worked night and day, without
weekends or vacations, with

_ unflagging intensity and good

humor, to coordinate our
statewide grassroots _work. Our
community owes a special debt
of gratitude to Jakki for her
passion, commitment, and
competence. Thanks, Jakki!

Beth Robinson
Susan Murray
Vermonters for Civil Unions

Biological argument for
marriage

By current definitions of
gender and orientation, I am
considered a heterosexual
male. As such, I consider it
very much a matter of self-
interest to support, amongst
other common civil rights, the
right of Gays and Lesbians to
engage in civil marriage. I sup-
port this right because I know
that the contrary voices are of
those who would presume to
define for others who and what
they may be. There is no right
that is more important to me

"than the right to define for

myself who and what I am, and
I know that I place that right in
jeopardy when I stand by and
watch as the right of others to
self-definition is called in
question.

In this regard I would like to
suggest that an important line
of argument, which I hope will
be addressed sooner or later,
was missed by the plaintiffs in
Baker vs State of Vermont. It

seems to me that the principal
point of difference between the
minority opinion, which advo-
cated the allowance of same-
sex marriages under the current
marriage statutes, and the
majority opinion, which stipu-
lated that a “separate but
equal” form of civil union
would satisfy Constitutional
requirements, was whether or
not the definition of marriage
as a legal union between “one
man and one woman” consti-
tuted sexual discrimination.
The majority held that since
anyone, whether male or
female, may participate in mar-
riage, so long as they are will-
ing to conform to the statutory
requirement to many someone
of the “opposite sex,” the cur-
rent statutes cannot be con-
strued as discriminating on the
basis of sex.

This line of reasoning, how-
ever, depends on an assump-
tion so basic to the beliefs of
our society that we do not ordi-
narily think to question it, yet
which is shown to be false by
the the‘ basic facts of human
reproductive and develope-
mental biology as cited in any
good basic textbook on the
subject. This assumption is that
we can, by a set of clear, objec-
tive, universally applicable cri-
teria, designate every human
being as belonging unequivo-
cably to one of two mutually
exclusive categories, either
“male” or “female.”

Most people, whether adults
or infants, seem by agreement
of their external genitalia,
internal reproductive organs,
gonads, and sex chromosomes
to so obviously fit into one or
the other of these categories
that we assume this must be
true for everyone. Yet if there
are people with enough differ-
ently mismatched assortments
of these or any other sexually
dimorphic criteria that we can-

not find any one criterion, or
set of criteria, by which we
could satisfactorally designate
every person as either unequiv-
ocally male or unequivocally
female, then our current mar-
riage statutes will not pass
Constitutional muster for fail-
ure to abide by the requirement
for equal protection and due
process. For if there are any
who cannot be objectively
defined as either male or
female, then either they are
neither, and so are prohibited
from marrying as a matter of
sexual discrimination, or they
are both, and may marry either
a man or a woman, which is
then a case of sex discrimina-
tion towards both men and
women.

The people I am talking
about, of course, are all those,
including “true hermaphro-
dites,” currently included
under the umbrella term “inter-
sexed.” Some of the individual
“types” that fall within this cat-
egory are probably as common
as about one in 1500 live
births, while others are much
rarer. ,Butover_a.ll, a reasonable
estimate seems to be that about
one in 500 infants is born with
sufficiently ambiguous exter-
nal genitalia that it cannot be
said to be obviously either
male or female. As far as other
sexual criteria are concerned,
there are individuals with
testes, male sex chromo-
somes(XY), obviously female
external genitalia, but no func-
tional internal reproductive
organs; others with one testis
and one ovary; or with two
gonads that are not differentiat-
ed as either testes or ovaries; or
without differentiated gonadal
tissue at all; or with female
gonads and chromosomes but
apparently male extremal geni-
talia.

In other words, no matter
what criteria we select, there is

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