Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Sex Change; Alimony; Julio Roberto Silverwolf

I heard about this story on The Young Turks this morning.

Lawrence and Julia Roach were married for 18 years before they divorced in 2004. In the divorce settlement, Julia Roach was granted $1,250 a month in alimony.

Since then, Julia has transitioned to become Julio Roberto Silverwolf, 55, a transgendered individual.

At issue in the case is Roach's contention that a man paying alimony to a man is illegal since same-sex marriage is not recognized under Florida law.
To quote Ben Mankiewicz, one thing elevates this from a "B" story to an "A" story: Julio Roberto Silverwolf. I laughed so hard I almost drove into a telephone pole.

As far as the alimony thing goes, I'm not a lawyer, but the same-sex marriage argument seems too clever by half. Wouldn't it be more effective to argue that the person Lawrence Roach divorced doesn't exist anymore? He divorced a woman named Julia Roach. In her place, there is now a "transgendered individual" named Julio Roberto Silverwolf. Can somebody produce a document ordering Mr. Roach to pay alimony to Julio Silverwolf?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I see the homophobia here. And its kind of scary how you can put those thoughts in his head. The analysis is simple. Lawrence Roach is a self-interested individual who wants to spend the $1250 a month on something other then his ex. Trans-gender or not, I think it matters little to him.

There are a lot of good examples of homophobia in this world. I just want to point out that claiming every story has homophobia behind it is only going to make it harder to remove homophobia from our society.