A real live, legally valid same-sex marriage (?)

[Sanford Levinson]

Eugene writies:
>        As to the supposed constitutional requirement of honoring
>Bridget's own sense of sexual identity, let me ask this:  What if Terry,
>a man who psychologically identifies with women and who dresses as a
>woman -- possibly a preoperative transsexual, but possibly just anyone
>who can be said to "scientifically" and objectively have such a
>psychological condition -- wants to be assigned to room with a female
>student, but the student objects?
>
>        It seems to me that the government-run university should be free
>to assign Terry somewhere else based on this objection (Sandy, do you
>agree?).  And if this is so, then I'm not sure why the Constitution
>distinguishes Terry's "own sense of sexual identity, backed up as it is
>by 'scientific argument" from Bridget's sense of her sexual identity.
>
I share Eugene's intuitions.  One difference between Terry and Bridget is
that Bridget has indeed gone through the operation, which, I assume,
removes any lingering doubt that the proclaimed identification could simply
be "strategic misrepresentation" for the purpose of gaining access to
women's locker rooms, etc.  (Cf. our endless discussions of what it should
take to show the religious basis for some controversial conduct.)  Does
Eugene's shift of example from Bridget to Terry mean that he *would*
require the state university both to honor Bridget's request to be roomed
with another woman and to deny the roommate's request to be assigned
someone else because of her discomfort at sharing living quarters with a
transexual?  And I assume, incidentally, that we wouldn't be equally
sympathetic to requests based on race.

Sandy