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Why is the state allowed to define sex for the purpose of assigning rights?

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This question has been simmering in the back of my mind for a long time.

As a result of covering stories related to LGBT rights, and particularly, debates over hate crimes (see the “small murders” section) and same-sex marriage, it occurred to me that laws that use sex as a criteria for assigning marriage rights require the state to define a person’s sex. I am using the word sex here as a matter of biology, as opposed to gender, which is a matter of cultural performance. However, not everyone has a clear sexual identity, especially at birth. Given the variation in human biological sex that exists in nature, it’s hard to see how the state can define who is a same-sex or opposite sex couple without violating the equal protection clause of the constitution, which requires that laws be applied equally to all.

Whose rights are affected by laws assigning marriage rights on the basis of sex? Transsexual people who have been medically diagnosed with gender identity disorder have the outward appearance of being one sex, but have brains wired for the opposite sex. Transsexual people may have same-sex or opposite sex orientations. There have been legal cases in which the marriages of transsexuals to people they view as their opposite-sex partners have been invalidated by judges who insisted that biological sex is fixed at birth, is revealed by external genitalia, and can’t be changed.

However, intersex people may be born with ambiguous genitalia, or may present as one sex at birth and find at puberty that they have the sexual anatomy of the opposite sex. Parents and doctors guess the gender with which the newborn is most likely to identify, and they don’t always get it right. If you have someone who appears to be female, or is classified as female at birth, and who is ultimately determined to be male, what gives the state the right to decide whom that person is allowed to marry? Should that not be a private decision?

I don’t think that taking the legal definition of sex out of the hands of the state would invalidate sex discrimination laws, or keep private organizations from having membership or hiring criteria based on sex. For example, the Catholic church can continue to insist that all priests be male based on they perceive a male to be, because they are a private organization. An employee can still sue for sex discrimination based on their self-identification as a member of a particular sex, their employer’s identification of them as a member of a particular sex. All I’m questioning is whether the state has the right to determine who is of a particular sex.

In my mind, none of this is related to moral beliefs anyone might have about homosexuality, transsexualism, or gay marriage. I’m simply asking whether this is something that belongs in the state’s purview?

I’m not a lawyer, so there is a very good chance I’m missing something. Any thoughts?

When artists and scientists collide: Steve Harrison on collaboration

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Steve Harrison is an architect by training whose work in academia and industry has crossed into engineering, computer science and interactive media. He is also a provocative thinker about the value of cross-disciplinary collaboration in research and teaching. Steve is also my co-PI on the CPATH Distributed Expertise Project funded by the National Science Foundation. The PI is Lillian (Boots) Cassel. In this video, Steve talks about what it’s been like to build collaborations between scientists, engineers and artists at Xerox PARC and between computer science, art, design and media students at Virginia Tech.

[bubblecast id=290102 thumbnail=475×375 player=475×375]

Superintendent: IJIMS Strengthened Learning and Professional Development in New Jersey School District

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In June, 2009, my colleague Ursula Wolz and I had a chat with outgoing Ewing New Jersey Public Schools Superintendent Raymond Broach about his views on the IJIMS Project. IJIMS or the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers, is collaboration between Ewing township’s middle school and The College of New Jersey that is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing Project.  Wolz is the Project’s principal investigator; I am a co-PI along with Monisha Pulimood. The other TCNJ members of our team are gender equity specialist Mary Switzer, several TCNJ student research assistants, and a select group of volunteer mentors. Meredith Stone is our external evaluator.

Our hypothesis was that students who don’t think of themselves as “computing types”  can be successfully introduced to computing and programming concepts by learning to do multimedia journalism about their own communities. Our research results more than validate our hypothesis.

In this interview, Dr. Broach lauded the constructivist nature of the IJIMS model – a method of teaching the emphasizes collaboration and discovery, making students participants in creating knowledge, not merely absorbing knowledge. Broach noted that the Fisher teachers and guidance counselor who collaborated with us also received training in multimedia journalism and programming in Scratch. This, he said was a departure from the usual professional development model, because it required the teachers to learn skills that weren’t necessarily part of their training.

By the way, one of the Fisher teachers, Laura Fay, recently presented her experience teaching the Scratch programming language in the 8th grade language arts classroom at a meeting for investigators in the BPC program. You can read the notes from the presentation she and Ursula Wolz gave on the IJIMS project:

Bertin M. Louis: Some Haitian Protestants Agree With Pat Robertson

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“Haiti, Now and Next:

“On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Leogane, and other parts of Haiti. The day after this catastrophe, Reverend Pat Robertson, the host of the 700 Club and an influential voice in the American fundamentalist movement, remarked that centuries ago Haitians swore a pact to the Devil in order to gain their freedom from slavery under the French. The moment to which Robertson referred in his comments was the Bwa Kayiman Vodou ceremony that launched the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). Despite the humanitarian efforts of his charitable organization currently assisting Haitians with earthquake relief, Robertson’s remarks strike many as callous and racist. But missing in some of the responses to those remarks in the midst of this unimaginable tragedy, which include condemnations and historical essays, is an important reality of the contemporary Haitian religious landscape which has been neglected thus far and bears analysis: some Haitians (Haitian Protestants, in particular) also believe that Haiti is cursed…”

Read the whole thing