|
 Dana Zzyym claimed in a federal discrimination lawsuit filed in
the U.S. District Court in Denver that it was a constitutional
violation to force an “intersex” person to pick either a male or
female when seeking to travel abroad.
“I am not male, I am not female, I am intersex, and I shouldn’t have
to choose a gender marker for my official U.S. identity document
that isn’t me,” Zzyym said in a statement.
The lawsuit names U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the
director of the Colorado passport agency as defendants.
The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for
comment.
Zzyym was born in 1958 with “ambiguous external sex
characteristics,” and the gender box on the birth certificate was
initially left blank, the lawsuit said.
Zzyym’s parents and doctor decided “Dana would be raised as a boy”
with the name Brian Orin Whitney and “male” was later added to the
birth certificate, it said.
“Similar to many other intersex children, by age five, Dana had been
subjected to several irreversible, invasive, painful, and medically
unnecessary surgeries designed to make Dana’s body conform to binary
sex stereotypes,” the complaint said.
Whitney enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1978 and served as a machinist
mate during three tours of duty in Beirut and one throughout the
Gulf, it said.
Leaving the Navy in 1984, Whitney later realized that the male
gender identification was “arbitrary” and explored living as a
woman, which did not feel right either, according to the lawsuit.
[to top of second column] |
Whitney ultimately adopted the name Dana Zzyym and was denied a
passport last year when attempting to travel to Mexico City for the
International Intersex Forum.
Zzyym’s attorney, Paul Castillo of the LGBT-rights group the Lambda
Legal Defense Fund, said India, Nepal, Malta, Australia and New
Zealand allow a third gender option for passports, and other
countries are considering making a similar change.
Zzyym is not seeking a monetary award, Castillo said, but merely to
force a change in U.S. policy.
“Dana is being deprived of the right to lawfully exit the United
States because of personal characteristics, and that’s
discrimination, pure and simple,” Castillo said.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Paul Tait)
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