This has all the makings of a farce.
A couple jailed on suspicion of having a same-sex wedding was freed Monday after a doctor determined that the groom is a hermaphrodite. Prosecutor Jose Planas ordered the couple jailed after their civil wedding Friday, when the priest scheduled to perform the religious ceremony the following day said he received a call saying the groom, Jesus Alejandro Martinez, was actually a woman.
Same-sex marriages are illegal in Paraguay, and news of the arrest became the talk of the nation.
Planas had threatened Martinez with five years in prison for falsification of documents, and said he could charge the bride, Blanca Estigarribia, with complicity.
But the couple was released Monday. A doctor who inspected Martinez in jail ruled that he is a hermaphrodite, with atrophied female genitals and well-developed male genitals, according to the couple’s lawyer, Jorge Cantero.
“Conclusion: He is a man,” Cantero said.
[…]
Martinez, who has some feminine traits, said he suspected an ex-girlfriend made the accusation to the priest.
“I always felt like a man, with no feminine inclination,” he said.
Martinez said the couple would continue to live along the border near the Argentine city of Clorinda – “where everybody knows us and loves us.”
Of course, this whole thing could have been rendered a non-issue by making same-sex marriages legal and arresting that phone-freak for harassment. Poking the state’s nose into people’s pants before letting them marry is just plain rude.
