[BullDog]

Thank you for your response as well. Yes, I don't see the situation in California being dire, but on the other hand the legal state of marriage for same sex couples is still tenuous at best in most places. But yes it makes it puzzling for me, but I don't see it as an easy way out.

What they want is equal rights. It's what we all want.

I think marriage can be very tenuous for transsexed people as well. I have heard more than one person mention their marriages are often investigated for fraud.

I don't see this as a "transgender/transsexual loophole." It is a "heterosexual" loophole where if you have one legal male and one legal female you can have a legal marriage. Obviously, if you had two transsexed individuals of the same legal sex (2 females or 2 males) this "loophole" wouldn't apply either.

As a lesbian, I would be happy if achieving lesbian status for someone who wasn't lesbian so they could get married or achieve something for their partners or families was helpful. Unfortunately, there is no legal, financial or any other institutional advantage to doing so. There also isn't for being transsexed/transgender. It is lining up with a so-called heterosexual coupling that does the trick. The defenders of "traditional" marriage are not happy with an FTM or MTF getting married to someone of the opposite sex-they will see that as a "loophole" or worse.

If anything, I see this could be viewed just as much as undermining of same sex marriage, but that isn't how it's being viewed, which I do find fascinating.