COUPLE'S UNION SHOWS SSM DILEMMAS: From the Associated Press

Judi Howden found happiness in her second marriage, but only after a struggle with issues that have destroyed other families and divided the nation.

With Michael Howden, she had love, another child and a home. It took all three to keep the family together as Michael became Mikayla.

They married nearly four years ago. Mikayla changed her name in 2003 and underwent a sex change in September. The act transformed them into a legally married same-sex couple, despite a ban on such unions in 40 states, including New Hampshire. ...

The couple's experience highlights a legal Catch-22. States can either recognize or refuse to recognize someone's new gender after a sex change. Either decision inescapably permits some form of same-sex marriage.

Recognition lets existing, heterosexual marriages like the Howdens' become same-sex. Denying recognition permits new same-sex marriages--like one between Judi and Mikayla if they were to marry today--because the spouses' genders differ only on paper, not visibly. ...

Apart from Mikayla Howden's gender change, her family's Concord home is like many across middle America. There are prayers at meal times. One parent works while the other stays home with the kids. There are children's toys in every room.

But for Mikayla Howden, who likened her prior condition to a birth defect, treating a medical problem created a series of legal ones. She does not yet know if the government will recognize her as legally female, and fears the effects same-sex marriage laws could have on her family.

According to the National Center for Lesbian Rights in California, four states don't permit gender updates: Tennessee, Ohio, Kansas and Texas. About half of the remaining states do. A firm policy hasn't been legally well established in the remaining states, including New Hampshire, said Shannon Minter, the center's legal director. ...

Cases in Florida and Illinois are addressing whether transsexuals who have become men are legally fathers of children who were born through artificial insemination or adopted into their families while they were married. In California, a transsexual who became a woman is challenging a ruling that denied her husband citizenship because she was born male, Minter said.

"The human consequences are really painful," she said.

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