Judge Won't Grant 'Pregnant Man' a Divorce

Because Thomas Beatie technically may have been a woman when married
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 29, 2013 3:14 PM CDT
Judge Won't Grant 'Pregnant Man' a Divorce
Thomas Beatie in a 2008 file photo.   (AP Photo/Hermann J. Knippertz)

Welcome to the world's most confusing divorce case. A judge in Arizona today declined to grant a divorce to Thomas Beatie, who attained minor celebrity status as the "pregnant man" a few years back and gave birth to three children. Beatie, who was born a woman but identifies as a man, married wife Nancy in Hawaii in 2003. But was he a man or a woman at the time? Beatie had undergone a double-mastectomy by then and was starting hormone therapy, but he still had a woman's reproductive organs, reports AP. The judge today decreed that there wasn't enough evidence proving Beatie was a man at the time of the wedding. That makes it a same-sex marriage, which means that the state of Arizona doesn't recognize it. And if the state doesn't recognize the marriage, it can't grant a divorce, either.

Got it? Maybe the judge's explanation will help. "The decision here is not based on the conclusion that this case involves a same-sex marriage merely because one of the parties is a transsexual male, but instead, the decision is compelled by the fact that the parties failed to prove that (Thomas Beatie) was a transsexual male when they were issued their marriage license." All cleared up, then. (More Thomas Beatie stories.)

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