Free Republic

PHOENIX—An Arizona judge on Friday refused to grant a divorce for a transgender Arizona man who gave birth to three children after beginning to change his sex from female. Maricopa County Family Court Judge Douglas Gerlach ruled that Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages prevents Thomas Beatie's nine-year union from being recognized as valid. Thomas Beatie was born a woman and underwent a double-mastectomy but retained female reproductive organs and gave birth to three children. Gerlach said he had no jurisdiction to approve a divorce because there's insufficient evidence that Beatie was a man when he married Nancy Beatie in Hawaii.

Thomas Beatie, who gained fame as the world's first known legal man to give birth, has split from his wife of nine years. Beatie revealed the breakup with Nancy during a taping of the syndicated TV show The Doctors in which he also said he had undergone a final female-to-male gender reassignment surgery. Beatie began life as a woman and legally switched to a male identity, while preserving his female reproductive organs. He made headlines in 2007 after pictures of his bearded face and pregnant belly became public.

TRACY LaGONDINO is pregnant, and that news has drawn a fair amount of attention. It's been in People magazine, on "Oprah," all over the Internet. Tracy's baby, due in July, is doing well. But Tracy has a serious problem, and the rest of us do, too. A 34-year-old who grew up in Hawaii and used to compete in beauty contests - she was once a finalist in the Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant - Tracy, who now calls herself Thomas Beatie, apparently suffers from Gender Identity Disorder, syndrome 302.85 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association....

The pregnant man completes the second phase of his media trifecta: he/she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show Thursday. The first phase is to call a press conference: check. The third phase involves the book deal and the TV movie. Then well-deserved obscurity, broken only by appearances as an answer to trivia questions and “Where are they now” stories 10 years later. Reactions to Thomas Beatie and wife Nancy’s second phase.