I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation. I just finished an article that is coming out in the Touro Journal of Race, Gender and Ethnicity. That's the title of the article above. Pretty fancy, eh? They like those fancy titles in professorland. This has been keeping me pretty busy, and thank goodness it's done.
The law specifically ties gender identity to physical sex. Even those few states that allow a change on the birth certificate don't necessarily recognize that change, or, they impose restrictions, when it comes to bathrooms, homeless shelters, drug treatment centers, domestic violence shelters, prisons, sports, youth, foster care group homes, transgender parent custody or visitation of children in a divorce, adoption, health care, insurance coverage, employment discrimination, marriage, and military service laws.
The law has imposed similar restrictions on gay sexuality, and in fact it was a crime in over two dozen states. That is, until 2003, when the Supreme Court said that such laws violated the "due process" clause of the U.S. Constitution in Lawrence v. Texas.
Being gay is now protected by the U.S. Constitution. So I've been thinking: can we use this due process clause to loosen the chokehold that the law has on transgender people?
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