Currently, adults may present one of five forms of ID. In a brave new Amendment 3 world, we'll look back on today as a simpler time, like air travel before security started frisking Grandma. Before voting, consider the International Olympic Committee's gender-testing history of lab tests and lawsuits.
The Press sisters, two muscular, medal-sweeping Soviets, were catalysts for Olympic gender testing, and by the 1966 European Championships, female athletes were required to parade nude before gender judges. In 1968 the IOC replaced this unpopular practice with a DNA test to detect the presence of the XX chromosomes traditionally associated with females, as the science of the day held that only a man's DNA would contain a Y.
Thus began two decades of controversy during which Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, genetically an XXY, was banned from international competition. (In her defense, she later had a baby.) When Spanish hurdler Maria Patino was barred because of an XY, she sued the IOC and was allowed to compete.
Today, Texas has grounded its law on last century's science and limited marriage to couples with standard XY and XX chromosomes. In upholding Texas' law, the 4th District Court of Appeals chief justice wrote: "Male chromosomes do not change with either hormonal treatment or sex reassignment surgery. Biologically, a postoperative female transsexual is still male."
If Utah follows Texas' lead, an "androgen insensitive" woman (explained later) will someday accompany her boyfriend to a county clerk's office only to be denied a license upon discovery of her XY genetics. The state will tell her to find someone without a Y chromosome and 99 percent of her choices will be other females. She'll most likely sue the state, as Maria Patino did the IOC.
In 1992, the IOC reacted to these facts: A small region of genes, usually attached to the Y chromosome, is responsible for physical sexual expression. Christened SRY, these genes regulate whether Testes Determining Factor (TDF) triggers events that can convert the embryo into a male. Sometimes SRY attaches to the X chromosome, producing male characteristics in an XX female. Sometimes XY individuals with the SRY gene and TDF will appear female due to androgen insensitivity that blocks testesterone's sexual-developing qualities, or the embryo can simply lack TDF receptors.
The 1996 Atlanta Games employed SRY testing, and eight of 3,387 female athletes failed. All eight results were later declared false positives and the women were allowed to compete. Seven of these women were androgen insensitive.
Were we to adopt the SRY test for Amendment 3's purposes, we would run into the IOC's challenge, as well as people with intersex genitalia. The Intersex Society of North America, a resource group for people affected by these conditions, estimates that one in 100 births results in a body that differs from the standard.
Sally Lehrman summed up the situation in her 1997 article for Stanford Today: "The very science that enables sex testing is demonstrating that simple definitions are no longer biologically sound. An individual's genes, chromosomes, anatomy and psychosocial sex characteristics may not always agree."
In 1999, the IOC decided to discontinue gender verification.
The authors of "How Sexually Diamorphic Are We?" (American Journal of Human Biology, 2000) estimate an average 1.728 percent of live births deviate from the genital ideal. Applied to Utah, that's over 42,000 people.
The IOC's concern is testosterone, a performance-enhancing hormone, whereas Amendment 3's supporters desire that, to use an electrician's definition, only "males" and "females" get to file joint tax returns. So we really have no choice but to emulate the IOC circa 1966 and opt for visual inspection, since documents can be forged.
While taking some of the innocent joy out of the application process, stripping for verification is inevitable. With enough money, we can retrofit every town hall from Scipio to Snowville with inspection rooms. Fingerprints taken at this point will be verified at the wedding to foil stand-ins.
Amendment 3 will make life just that much more difficult, expensive and contentious. We don't need it.
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Jim Allred is a director of strategic planning for a Utah-based health system.
