Linda and Michael met, fell in love and married. They raised two children together. For many years, the marriage appeared happy.

But eventually the marriage went sour. Michael fell for another woman, one who happened to be close friends with Linda. After learning that Michael intended to leave her, Linda found Jesus.

Even in a country where half of couples divorce, Michael and Linda Kantaras' divorce trial stood out as being exceptionally nasty. The couple's sex life was explored in intimate detail. Linda, who originally had custody of the children, lost that privilege after judge Gerard O'Brien ordered her to undergo anger management classes. Because of her anger issues, and because a court-appointed psychologist considered Michael to be the better parent, Michael was granted primary custody.

Since that decision in February of 2002, Michael Kantaras has been the primary caretaker of his children. However, an appellate court recently overturned O'Brien's decision. The basis for this reversal is the simple fact that Michael Kantaras was born a woman.

Michael, born Margo, is a female to male transsexual who underwent gender reassignment surgery before meeting Linda. He had his breasts, ovaries and uterus removed and takes hormones which give him the voice, facial hair and build of a man.

Linda was allegedly aware of all of this when she married Michael. She also knew that Michael did not have a penis. Doctors can create a penis for transsexuals in a procedure called phalloplasty.

The surgery, which uses tissue from another part of the body to create an artificial penis, is often rejected by transsexuals. Phalloplasty, according to Dr. Ted Huang, an expert in transsexual surgery, is dangerous, expensive and yields generally unsatisfactory results. Urination is difficult, and a stiff rod must be inserted into the false penis for sex. Eventually, the fat layers degrade and the artificial penis ends up looking "like a dried-up cucumber," as Dr. Huang described in his testimony. Because same-sex marriage is illegal in Florida, where the Kantaras' live, Michael's gender became a hot-button issue during the divorce trial.

In his 809-page decision, Judge O'Brien declared that Michael was, indeed, a male. Additionally, he agreed that Linda had used Michael's transsexual status to turn his children against him. And the court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Dies, found Michael to be a better parent. The full decision may be downloaded here.

This decision stood until the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland, Florida, decided that Michael is legally a woman. Gender, the court decided, derives from "immutable traits determined at birth." With his marriage and divorce nullified, Michael Kantaras could potentially lose custody of his children. The appellate decision also threatens the legal status of his current marriage.

Michael's lawyer, Karen Doering, is disappointed by the appellate opinion. "From a legal perspective there are so many things wrong with this decision, but one of the things that they've done is said that your sex is immutably determined at birth," she says. "The marriage laws are clear that in determining the validity of a marriage you look at circumstances at the time of marriage."

Doering is also frustrated by the manner in which the court came to its decision. The three appellate judges used a dictionary to define gender. "What the court of appeals did was basically ignore the voluminous medical evidence in the record and say, 'well, because some dictionary definitions say that one's gender has to do with the ability to reproduce and certain reproductive organs we're going to rule on that rather than medical evidence that Michael Kantaras is a woman,'" she says.

When they met, Linda was pregnant with another man's baby. Michael adopted this child. Later, Linda became pregnant again using Michael's brother's sperm. Throughout their young lives, Michael is the only father these children have ever known.

Yet Linda's lawyer argues that Michael Kantaras has no rights to them. "This is no different than having a third party come in and say that they wanted rights to your children," according to Matthew Staver, lawyer for Linda Kantaras. Staver is also the president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative group devoted to "restoring the culture one case at a time by advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family," as their website attests.

Staver does not refer to Michael Kantaras by his legal name. To Staver, Michael Kantaras is "Margo" or "MK." Generally, Staver uses the feminine pronoun when referring to Michael, although occasionally he uses the male.

"Linda is the only rightful mother of those children," says Staver.

Doering stresses the trial court's decision that Michael was a fitter parent. "There has been substantial parental alienation in this case with Linda using every means she can think of, including her religion, as a weapon against Michael," she says. "There was extensive evidence of Linda telling children that their father was the devil, that he lived in Satan's house of sin, and attempting to use religion to scare the children away from their father."

Linda "also had anger management issues," says Doering. "It is well documented in the 800-plus page decision that Michael is by far the better parent for these children," maintains Doering.

The condition of the marriage of Linda and Michael received substantial attention during the trial.

"Linda was attracted to MK not primarily for sexual reasons but for emotional reasons," says Staver. At the time they met, "Linda was coming off of a relationship with someone else and was emotionally attached to MK."

In the original trial, the sex life of Linda and Michael Kantaras was examined in intimate detail. In her testimony, Linda claimed that she had no sex life whatsoever during her nine years of marriage. However, a friend of Linda's testified that Linda had bragged about giving blowjobs to Michael and had told her friend that Michael used a strap-on during sex.

Linda "never considered MK to be a man," according to Staver and Linda's testimony. Doering, however, tells a much darker tale.

"Here's the real story," says Doering, "Linda Kantaras knew about Michael's transsexual status before they even got together. She fully accepted Michael as a man. And until she perjured herself on the stand she had always said, and had even said under oath a number of times, that she had never considered Michael to be anything but a man."

"However," continues Doering, "when Michael refused to call off the divorce and come back to her, she basically said 'you'll be sorry- I'll out you to the world' and she found an attorney who told her that a good way to fight this was to claim that Michael is legally a female. So in order to further her legal arguments she started to say that Michael was a woman."

Even Linda's own sister, called by Linda's lawyer in her defense, testified that Linda never referred to Michael as a woman.

By her own hand, Linda admitted that she thought of Michael as a man. In a letter that was, ironically, intended to portray Michael in a negative light, Linda writes "I am a woman who looked at you as a man."

The trial court did find Michael to be a man. "The net result was a three week trial with extensive medical evidence and the un-refuted medical testimony was that Michael Kantaras is a male," says Doering. "The court in an 800+ page opinion analyzed all of the testimony, the evidence, the credibility of the witnesses, all of the case law on this issue," she continues. "It looked at the cases in the United States and in England and Australia that had addressed transsexualism and came to the conclusion that Michael is not only medically male, but he should be considered legally male as well."

By contrast, the decision of the appellate court is quite brief- a mere 12 pages long.

Staver, however, stands by the appellate court's opinion. He considers the original court's decision to be based on "subjective" matters. During the appeal, Staver says, "we pointed out that the only way to have any objectivity within the legal realm is to base it on objective evidence rather than on some subjective criteria.

"We presented a lot of information regarding not only what the law is and the impact of having sex determined primarily by non-objective factors. But also we looked at issues involving transsexual surgery itself and other similar mental disorders like transsexualism," he continues. "I think this case presents a common-sense approach."

"We also argued secondarily that this issue is one that is best suited for the legislature rather than the judicial branch and the court specifically mentioned that in its opinion," says Staver.

Staver considers "any issue involving marriage to be better-suited to the legislature." In addition, "courts are not the best social policy makers whenever there's an adversarial issue at stake," says Staver.

This argument does not sit well with Doering. "They have made a social policy decision. They've made a social policy decision that Michael Kantaras can only marry a man." Staver is one of the draftsmen of the Florida Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex marriage. The ultimate irony of this case is that Michael can now only participate in gay marriage.

Michael "is a heterosexual male who is attracted to women," says Doering. "But what the court has done in its decision is say that he can he can only engage in what, from a medical and psychological perspective is a same-sex marriage."

Doering asserts that the decision to leave this issue to the legislature is a political move. "The mantra 'this is something for the legislature to determine' is a new form of political activism by conservative judges who don't want to make rulings," she says. "This decision had a huge public policy impact. Whichever way the ruled, whether they used a dictionary or whether they used medical science, either way it was going to have a public policy impact."

And that's not all. "There were three judges who decided this ruling, one of whom has been nominated by President Bush to be placed on the Federal Bench," says Doering. "I would like to believe that a judge would not allow their political aspirations to interfere with a decision. But it is an interesting note."
Religion may have also factored into the appellate court's decision. "There have actually been several other cases that support transgendered marriages," Doering points out. "There's a NJ case, a NY case and a case out of California that did not result in a published decision. But this court disregarded those other cases and instead went with logic that was actually based on religion.

"It's interesting," she says, "that they used language in their decision saying'one's gender is immutably determined at birth.' The original quote was from the Littleton case out of Texas where the judge actually said that 'your sex is immutably determined by our creator at birth' So they kept the 'immutably fixed at birth but left our the 'by our creator' part," Doering continues. "They've reverted to these rulings that were based on religion rather than on science and the law."

Furthermore, she says, "I think it's very clear that religion played a hand in the cases that the court relied upon," in its decision.

"Now, this particular court in its short little conclusory opinion didn't make any religious references. But when you throw out the cases and the evidence that rely on science and you paraphrase from an opinion that was based primarily on religion and on what a particular judge thinks our creator determined, it certainly leads to that inference."


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