Mrs. and Mrs. Terry are man and wife
Okey Dokey..
Confirmation of male anatomy makes marriage legal, judge rules
By DERRICK NUNNALLY
dnunnally@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 23, 2007
Despite Wisconsin's same-sex marriage ban, Barbara Lynn Terry and Nicole Winstanley carried purses into a judge's office Friday and emerged as Mrs. and Mrs. Terry.
Marriage in Question
Barbara Lynn Terry (left) grabs ahold of her new wife, Nicole Winstanley Terry, after their wedding Friday in a Milwaukee County courtroom. Barbara Lynn Terry was born Ronald Francis Terry and has not undergone gender-reassignment surgery, making the couple's marriage legal.
first, a doctor had to confirm the male anatomy of Barbara Lynn Terry, who was born a man, lives as a woman and has been undergoing hormone therapy for years.
"That's all I needed to hear," Circuit Judge David A. Hansher told the doctor, via speakerphone, after learning that gender-reassignment surgery hadn't been performed on the person who used to be Ronald Francis Terry.
The wedding - between a 58-year-old transgendered convicted rapist and a 22-year-old Australian lesbian who came to the United States last month to marry a person she'd never met - is the first in recent Wisconsin memory to be accompanied by a written statement of the judge's legal rationale for performing it.
"Since Barbara Lynn Terry is a man under the law and has taken no steps to surgically become a woman, there is no legal impediment to marrying them," Hansher wrote. "In sum, he is still a man and his bride a woman."
With that, he performed a wedding that pronounced "husband and wife" upon the couple, who spent the next few hours joking about who is the wife. "I would've signed as husband if they would've let me," Nicole Winstanley Terry said.
"It doesn't matter what the legal definition is," Barbara Lynn Terry said solemnly, while embracing her new spouse. "We know better."
The couple tried to duck photographers and television cameras that had been the only courtroom witnesses to their union, which was performed in a judge's chambers. Neither had expected publicity to come from filing a $100 marriage-license application with the Milwaukee County clerk.
Their first try for a quick courtroom wedding was denied March 16, pending a review of whether a wedding between women named Barbara and Nicole was legal, and the delay was enough for unwanted attention to arrive.
After the nuptials, the couple rode the No. 10 bus to their first married meal at the Old Country Buffet on S. 76th St. Over pasta, sausage and sauerkraut, they described how their relationship formed online in February 2006, through a Web site's outlets for stories and discussion groups.
That turned into e-mail correspondence, then instant-message conversations led to telephoning and Web cam use. Then Nicole Winstanley, still in Melbourne, told her mother that she was in love.
"She chucked a hissy fit the first time I told her," Nicole Terry said.
Then the mother got the chance to get acquainted with her daughter's new spouse.
"She's fine with it now," Nicole Terry said.
Hurdles to overcome
The rest of this weird story and a picture....
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=581697
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