TO
make a penis from scratch, a surgeon needs the
right raw material. It might seem logical to
harvest from a place that has skin and fat to
spare, like the belly, but better results are
achieved from the forearm. Its soft inner flesh
is quite similar to penile tissue in terms of
vascular and nerve construction.
Originally developed to
help amputees, the procedure has been modified
so that a triangle of flesh, cut and rolled, can
be made functional on a female pelvis. The
operation involves complex severing and
reattachment of veins and nerves, but if the
procedure is a success, a transman -- the
preferred term for a female who surgically
becomes a male -- should have at least a
partially operable penis.
But what keeps transmen
from flocking to the Klinik Sanssouci in
Germany, where rock-star surgeon Dr. Jean-Paul
Daverio has performed 242 phalloplasties, is
sheer cost. The BMW of artificial penises will
set you back $48,000.
That's why most elect to
go in for the cheaper, less risky alternative.
Metoidioplasty involves working with the
existing female equipment to make it all look
and feel masculine -- without aiming for the
full-size model.
Incisions free the
clitoris (which enlarges somewhat, thanks to
testosterone injections) from its base, and
silicon implants in the labia are made to look
like testicles. Sensation is great, standing up
to urinate is possible, and hey -- lots of guys
have small dicks.
It's hard not to be
curious about this stuff, but it's not the kind
of thing you want to ask Jake Nash about,
because A) it's personal, and B) it's ancient
history.
In 2002, after he'd been
on intimate terms with urologists,
endocrinologists, plastic surgeons, and
psychiatrists for years, Massachusetts sealed
his original birth certificate and issued him a
new one that reads "Sex: Male." It was a moment
of triumph, but primarily for symbolic
reasons.
For all practical
purposes, Jake already was a guy -- a
sentimental, devoutly Christian guy -- to
everyone who knew him. He had a serious
girlfriend, a deep involvement in his church,
and a job helping the mentally ill find
work.
But the arrival of his
updated birth certificate promised new happiness
-- he and Erin Barr could finally be man and
wife. Surgically transitioning from female to
male is a radical act, but Jake is deeply
conservative at heart. He didn't want to live in
sin.
Yet Trumbull County Judge
Thomas Swift was more interested in the organ
between Jake's legs. He interrogated Jake in
court on the particulars of his genitals. When
Jake refused to answer, the judge refused to
grant a marriage license. Despite the miracles
of medicine, he ruled, Jake is still a
woman.
Queer Girl/Straight
Guy
Jake was once a
mischievous little girl named Pamela, who liked
to hide her uncle's car keys, put beans in her
ears, and escape to the lake to go
fishing.
But as much as she loved
her funny niece, Martha Kaluback had a nagging
feeling that something was wrong. Pamela never
did get the hang of dating. Was her niece a
lesbian? Martha wondered. She never said
anything. Neither did anyone else. Their family
was too conservative to talk openly about such
things.
Pam knew that she wasn't a
lesbian. Although she liked women, it wasn't
that simple. She tried to fit in -- even married
a man at age 31 -- but something felt
fundamentally wrong.
A Discovery Channel
documentary changed her life.
She watched in amazement
as men and women told stories that paralleled
her experience. She saw people undergoing
surgery and hormone therapy to change their sex,
and for the first time in 33 years, she knew
that happiness was possible.
It became a reality after
she began treatment. And after she met Erin Nash
-- a tough-minded West Virginia native -- it
doubled.
Erin was five when her
family moved to Warren. Her part-Seminole mother
converted to Catholicism to give her children an
uncompromising view of right and wrong, and
Catholic school reinforced Erin's
faith.
But as an adult, while
attending a music festival, she met a Native
American woman who made her curious about
traditional Indian beliefs. Erin came to believe
in the "two-spirit" tradition, which holds gay
and transgendered people in high regard, because
they are thought to have a special
purpose.
Erin and Jake met on the
internet in a Christian chat room. Weeks of
instant messaging led to the discovery that they
shared an appreciation for Broadway musicals,
Robert Frost, and big dogs.
Three weeks into their
electronic relationship, Jake broke the news: He
was born a woman. To his surprise and delight,
she told him about the two-spirit
tradition.
After two months of
e-mails, Erin found herself driving 12 hours to
New Hampshire to meet Jake in person.
They liked each other, yet
Erin drove home the next day. Jake was so
uncomfortable and nervous, it was hard to relax
around him, she remembers. He says that was
partly because of sex -- they had never
discussed it, and he didn't know what, if
anything, was expected of him. Jake does not
believe in sex before marriage, but he need not
have worried-- Erin just wanted to talk and hang
out.
They cut that first visit
short, but on the drive home, Erin felt
compelled to pull off the road. She called him
from a pay phone, and they talked about faith,
inhibitions, and relationships for three
hours.
Over the ensuing months,
they dated long-distance until Erin finally got
on a plane to New Hampshire and brought her man
back home to Warren in a U-Haul. A year later,
Jake got down on one knee while a hired
violinist played songs from Phantom of the Opera
-- the tragic romance of a man who cannot show
his face to anyone.
In retrospect, there is
only one thing he would have done differently:
He would have asked Erin to move to New
England.
Instead, today they are
fighting for the marriage license they applied
for two years ago. It happened like
this:
Jake moved to Trumbull
County before he'd completed his sexual
reassignment. But by that time, he'd received
testosterone treatment for more than a year, so
he looked, talked, and walked like a guy. Only
his name was still Pam.
A name change is at the
top of the agenda for most transmen, but Jake
had a hard time settling on one. He wanted it to
be something his mother liked, and he wanted it
to have meaning. He decided on Jacob, after an
Old Testament character who, he says, literally
wrestled with God, refusing to let go until God
gave him his blessing.
It would be a fitting
metaphor, for his coming struggle would be not
only with the men representing the law, but
those representing God.
Jake moved in with Erin
(they slept in separate beds) and got a job
helping the mentally disabled. After the
one-year residency requirement for name changes
in Trumbull County was met, Pamela became
Jacob.
He remembers Magistrate
Thomas Norton asking hard questions about his
gender, as if to impress upon him the
seriousness of his petition. The magistrate read
the doctors' and psychiatrists' letters that
Jake pressed on him and, once satisfied, signed
off on the change. It was a pivotal moment in
Jake's life, but his task wasn't quite
complete.
Jake's birth certificate
would read "female" for another two years, while
he endured rounds of arduous surgeries. When he
was all sewn up and the doctors and shrinks had
signed off on their work, he petitioned
Massachusetts, his state of birth, to legally
become a man.
His original birth
certificate was sealed, and a new one was
issued.
Jake felt great. He liked
his job, he was in love with Erin, and they'd
found a church that satisfied his need for
spiritual stringency. Warren's North-Mar
Christian and Missionary Alliance Church follows
an exacting interpretation of the Bible that
appealed to him.
Erin and Jake were soon
active members. Jake, who had once toured with
the well-known gospel choir the Continental
Singers, tried out for North-Mar's version,
known as the Worship Team. He recalls the person
in charge being delighted with his original
guitar compositions.
Erin jumped in with both
feet too, volunteering at the church day care on
Sunday mornings. They joined a supper exchange
for devout couples and went to premarital
counseling sessions with a senior
pastor.
That winter they set a
wedding date -- August 31, 2002. Soon the pair
was accepting hundreds of RSVPs from friends and
family. The church was reserved, Jake's dad paid
the deposit for the banquet hall, and a white
limousine was hired.
But they didn't foresee
the storm clouds ahead.
Trouble
in Eden
Soon after reserving the
church, Jake says, he received a disturbing call
from Pastor John Temple, who had counseled the
couple and was supposed to marry
them.
"I was told your name used
to be Pamela," Jake recalls Temple saying. "Have
you been truthful with me?"
When Jake stammered that
he had been truthful, Temple lost his tact: "Do
you have a penis?"
The groom-to-be was
humiliated. Had it been anyone else, he might
have lost his cool, but he respected the man who
had been his confidant for almost a year. Jake
says he mumbled something vague about a medical
condition; about having had some problems
"correcting" his anatomy. He doesn't remember
exactly what was said after that, because he
suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
The pair says that Temple
wanted to get Jake, Erin, and Jake's "accuser"
-- Temple refused to name her, but Erin believes
it was one of her stepsisters -- together to lay
everything on the table. Jake refused,
considering it beneath his dignity.
So that week, Erin met
with the pastor and his wife alone. She came
home in a rage, reporting that the pastor had
said he would do everything in his power to help
her get out of the relationship, because Jake
was clearly "possessed." Temple told her that he
had encountered another parishioner like Jake,
who had been married at North-Mar before he got
there, and that he had personally tried to get
their marriage annulled.
When Erin made it clear
that she didn't want the pastor's help, she was
told that they were no longer welcome to
participate in church activities. She couldn't
work in the nursery, and Jake would be asked to
leave the choir. They could come to services,
but that was all.
Jake was scared. He felt
intuitively that a preacher like Temple, an
excitable conservative activist, would not keep
this information under his hat. "I knew we
hadn't heard the last of him," Jake
says.
Temple tells an entirely
different story: He never provided premarital
counseling, and he never agreed to marry them.
He also goes to great lengths to distance his
church from the couple. There is a difference
between people who simply show up on Sundays, he
argues, and those who are "true members of the
congregation." Erin and Jake were never true
members.
But he's clearly unnerved
by the subject. He refused to let a reporter
speak with anyone involved with the church, and
he cut short two interviews with
Scene.
Of course, it could be
embarrassing for Temple to acknowledge that he
had allowed someone "possessed" to sing in his
choir and mix in his Bible groups, without his
having a clue.
When told of Temple's
response, Erin says simply, "We pray for
him."
The Incredible
Disintegrating Wedding
Erin
and Jake found a new church in Warren, with a
supportive pastor who didn't have a problem with
Jake's sexuality. (The couple refuses to give up
the minister's name, for fear that it might
cause him trouble.) He agreed to preside over
their wedding, which was then a few months
away.
But having survived the
hit from Preacher Temple, they were about to get
slammed by the state.
In August 2002, Erin and
Jake filled out their marriage-license
application for the Trumbull County Clerk of
Courts. Erin remembers being in a rush because
she had a 4:30 hair appointment. They paid the
$44 dollars, swore the oath, and made
arrangements to pick up the license. A week
later, everything went wrong.
When Jake returned to the
courthouse, a clerk quickly fetched Magistrate
Thomas Norton, who informed Jake that the county
would not sanction the marriage.
Apparently, when Jake's
Social Security number was entered into a
computer, his former name popped up. Norton
considered Jake a woman, and same-sex marriage
is prohibited. (The magistrate declined
comment.)
Jake was humiliated again.
He remembers saying something like "That has
been corrected." But even after being shown
Jake's new birth certificate, Norton was
unmoved.
Jake was late picking up
Erin, who worked in the billing department of a
Youngstown medical-equipment company. When he
arrived, he found her surrounded by a gaggle of
excited co-workers. She wanted to see the
license, but before she could get the question
out, he shook his head no. Her face crumpled,
and they drove home in silence.
They decided to go ahead
with the ceremony. Both Erin and Jake have close
families, and Jake was expecting a sizable
Massachusetts contingent. They put their
energies into making the day as special as
possible, license or no. But once again, the
holy man chickened out.
On the 6 o'clock news,
Judge Thomas Swift had explained to a Channel 33
reporter that Magistrate Norton had made the
right decision -- no matter what Massachusett
says, Jake was still a woman. It was the lead
story, and that week other TV stations and the
newspapers picked it up. The couple became the
target of gawkers throughout Warren.
The publicity scared their
new pastor. When they showed up at church that
Sunday, eight days before the wedding, he
requested a private meeting, in which he told
them that he was unable to follow through. The
two don't want to speak ill of him, because they
believe that he personally supported their
union. A group of deacons pressured him into
backing out, says Erin.
But with no pastor, the
ceremony seemed doomed. Worse, members of the
wedding party were dropping like flies. They
lost a groomsman, who was freaked out about the
newscast. Then they lost the little ringbearer,
Erin's five-year-old nephew, whose father had a
change of heart. After the newscast -- to the
chagrin of his wife and the rest of his family
-- he announced that he wasn't going to let his
kid participate in the wedding of "two
fags."
Then Erin's best friend
and maid of honor apologetically explained that,
as a schoolteacher, she couldn't afford the
negative publicity.
Disaster seemed imminent.
The day before the ceremony, Erin was poring
through the Trumbull County phone book, looking
for a preacher. She finally reached Reverend
Rick Schumacher of the Unity Church Center in
Liberty Township. To her relief, he was not
interested in the history of her fiancé's
organs. The unusual couple came to him for help,
and he was glad to give it. But because there
was no license, he officiated over a commitment
ceremony, not a wedding.
The lack of paperwork
didn't make much difference to the 150 guests.
Jake's uncle, Mike Kaluback, in a Boston
tough-guy accent, calls Schumacher "an absolute
je-wel!" and says that in spite of the glitches,
they "pulled it off good."
Belinda Stein, Erin's
aunt, remembers how loved ones rallied to make
the ceremony a success: Erin's niece and the
child of a friend eagerly took on the missing
ringbearer's duties. Erin's little sister was
upgraded to maid of honor.
Yet Belinda, a Catholic,
still finds herself having to defend the couple.
She gives the example of a family member who
wouldn't stop arguing that Jake is really a
woman and that to endorse a "gay" marriage would
be a sin.
"I know people disagree,"
Belinda says. "But I believe some people are
born into the wrong sex. Now that we have
[the technology] . . . they have the
right to change it."
More important than Jake's
surgically altered anatomy is the loving way he
treats Erin, she says. The doting aunt likes
what she sees: He buys her niece flowers for no
reason.
Jake's family seems to
agree that the two are good together. Martha
Kaluback, Jake's aunt, says that she never was
able to pinpoint exactly what made her sister's
oldest child seem so awkward. But since Jake
found Erin, he seems more content in his own
skin.
Martha remembers unhappier
days. About 15 years ago, when Jake was in his
early 20s, his sister had to be fitted for her
wedding dress. It was decided that Jake -- who
was then Pam -- would try on a dress as well.
The gown was beautiful, Martha remembers, but
when Jake saw his reflection in the mirror, he
broke down crying. His aunt didn't know what to
make of it, but in retrospect, Martha considers
it a telling moment.
Here Comes the
Judge
The Defense of Marriage
Act was still just a twinkle in state
Representative Bill Seitz's eye when Magistrate
Norton refused to sign the license, but the
court's stand was unremarkable: Gay marriage is
still not legal in any state.
More interesting is
Trumbull County's decision to label Jake female,
despite the fact that Massachusetts has judged
him male. Most recently, Judge Diane Grendell of
the 11th Ohio District agreed that Jacob and
Erin are a same-sex couple. Their lawyer, Randi
Barnabee, says they are now contemplating a
federal suit against Ohio for refusing to
recognize the Massachusetts birth
certificate.
"Like most states,
Massachusetts lets physicians make these
decisions," says Barnabee. "According to the
Constitution, Ohio has to accept Massachusetts'
[legal documents]."
Yet Ohio happens to be one
of only three states that resist changing birth
certificates retroactively. One thing is
certain: Transsexuals occupy a shadowy legal
space.
Sexual reassignment has
been viable for only a few decades, and there
are no laws explicitly banning unions of
transgendered people. Transsexuals marry all the
time -- sometimes to people of their own sex,
sometimes to people of the opposite sex,
depending upon the vigilance or mores of the
county clerk who signs the paperwork.
But Barnabee cautions
against losing sight of the person under the
microscope. From the first hearing on, Jake's
loved ones say, he has been studied and
scrutinized like a lab monkey.
At the initial hearing on
the license, held less than a week after the
ceremony, Judge Swift asked Jake point-blank
about his organs and surgeries. Sitting
attentively in the courtroom was Pastor John
Temple.
Understandably, Jake found
the questioning intrusive. Barnabee advised her
client to stay silent.
In the end, however, the
judge chose not to rule against Jake and Erin on
the basis of Jake's toolbox. He used Jake's
previous marriage instead.
Skeleton in the
Closet
Before Jake met Erin --
and when he was still called Pam -- he was
briefly married to a man in New Hampshire. It
ended in divorce, and although Erin knew about
it, the two never discussed it. Regrettably,
when Erin filled out the probate clerk's
questionnaire, she checked "no" to the question
of whether either of them had been married
before. Jake didn't notice.
Erin says that her
fiancé's former life had completely
slipped her mind, because the man she loves has
never been married to another woman.
After Magistrate Norton
gave them the bad news, they submitted an
amended application, with Jake's former marriage
and divorce duly noted. The court accepted the
new paperwork, but Judge Swift would cite their
original failure to disclose in ruling against
them.
Barnabee says that the
whole thing is a moot point anyway. The judge
had already made up his mind, she believes, and
was just looking for reasons to support his
decision.
Now that Grendell has
denied their appeal, Jake and Erin have one card
left to play: They can sue in federal court to
force Ohio to abide by Massachusetts'
ruling.
The court battle has taken
a toll on Jake's health. He suffers from
debilitating ulcers and relies on monthly
disability checks to pay the bills.
There have been bright
spots. Thanks to the internet, they've spoken
with many others in similar situations, and last
year Jake and Erin surrounded themselves with
nearly 1,000 transmen at the True Spirit
Conference in Washington, D.C. For the first
time, Jake and Erin hooked up with Christians
they knew from their transsexual Yahoo
group.
The pair has since been
introduced to another church in Akron, Emmanuel
Fellowship. The now-retired pastor is a lesbian,
but members stick to a mostly literal
interpretation of scripture. Jake has even taken
a leadership role: He was asked to be a part of
the search committee for a new
preacher.
Unfortunately, the
prognosis for getting married remains poor. The
couple could move to another state and try their
luck where nobody knows them, but that would be
a lonely road. And there's no guarantee that
their Ohio experiences wouldn't be
repeated.
They're suffering from
battle fatigue, but they know that fighting it
out in federal court could benefit others down
the road. Then there's the issue of children.
Erin remembers what she told a television
reporter who asked her why they didn't just back
down and settle for "living
together."
"Because if we decide to
have them, we want our kids to know we loved
them enough to do this," she said.
