Same sex marriage is unnatural you say? Well by all means, please neatly define what a female is and what a male is and we can quickly ban these same sex abominations. But that's right - it can't be done. However easy you think it may be, it simply is not possible to make 2 categories (male and female) and then fit all people into one or the other. Normally it isn't that important to specifically categorize people as either biologically male or female but when it does come up, people can't figure out how to do it. Ask the International Olympic Committee. In the 1936 Olympics, Hermann Ratjen tried to pass himself off as a woman and that began the need to once and for all have a test to separate the males from the females (side note: Hermann Ratjen did not win against the women athletes). They tried checking the genitals. They tried testing for chromosomes (xx/female or xy/male). Let's just say there is nothing straight forward about this process, and the medical community, at times, had to set the IOC straight about the complexity of the biology involved. Trying to ban males from marrying males and females from marrying females will be equally problematic. If we focus not on the sex of the person, but the gender (i.e. banning men from marrying men and women from marrying women), then it gets even more complicated. I think this quote from the Intersex Society of North America website says it well.
"Whether or not the medical establishment rallies to explain intersex to the U.S. courts remains to be seen. If history is any guide, as gay marriage prohibitions make their way through the courts, a scientific expert here and a medical expert there will offer up one little gene or one type of anatomical tissue that might be used as a male-female sorting mechanism. But such a sorting system simply won’t accord with what people see on the outside and feel on the inside. The fact is, every anatomical bit you think of as female (breasts, XX-chromosomes, even ovarian tissue) can be found on someone who has looked and felt like a male since birth. The opposite is also true. Think about it: if sex categories really were naturally strict, we wouldn’t see so many cosmetic surgeons offering men breast reductions and offering women facial electrolysis."
A ban on same sex marriage is unnecessary and discriminatory, but it is also biologically naive. How do we define who is a woman? Her level of of testosterone/estrogen levels? How her genital look? Her chromosomes? Whether she feels like she is a woman? That she is able to conceive and give birth? Whether she has ovaries? Whether she has a vagina? Does she have to be born with these things or can they be surgically or chemically imposed later in life? Good luck creating a legal set of rules that includes all people. I can tell you that there are people married right now that both have XY chromosomes.
It's interesting to me because I never hear these kinds of discussions when same sex marriages are being discussed. I assume that as bans are being challenged more and more cases are moving through the courts, these sort of silent issues will begin to rise to surface because eventually they just can't be ignored.
I think the larger point here is that there is a lot of crossover between what we know to be men and what we know to be women. Yes we can tell the difference, but sometimes the line isn't so clear, and I think that makes people uncomfortable - so uncomfortable that it causes fear and discrimination. Feminism, gay/bi issues, intersex issues, transgender/transsexual issues, (and of course the sexual issues in Science Sex and the Ladies) - these all suffer from people's discomfort with mixing the feminine and masculine.
Women aren't biologically equip to vote/think straight while on their periods/have jobs/be good at science/play sports/be on the front lines of combat/do whatever happens to be the thing that women aren't supposed to do at each particular time period in our history. Only men can do these things.
Men can't want to kiss/fall in love with other men/get married (women are supposed to make them do that)/want to nurture and raise children. Only women could want that.
Men need a penis and women must have a vagina that can hold a penis. Etc...Etc... Point is people find the gender-bending associated with these issues disturbing. This creates fear and discrimination, and then scared angry people try to say that this gender bending -whatever form it takes- is unnatural. However, we know that a distinct line between male and female that all people easily fit into is really the unnatural, biologically naive thing here.
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