Colorado, Champion on Forefront of Non-Binary Birth Certificates

The state of Colorado just issued the first amended birth certificate that reads “Intersex.”

Anunnaki Ray Marquez spent the early years of their life without any awareness that their body was different from other children of the same age. Growing up female was all that they knew, and not until exploring their sexuality and sexual identity as a teenager did they discover that perhaps things were a bit different.

“I am what they consider hormonally intersex,” Marquez told them magazine. “My hormones are not that of a typical female.”

Intersex, the general term given when a variation of hormones, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics that cannot be easily separated into one of the two binary sex categories, is now a part of Marquez’ identity. Assigned female at birth, he now identifies as a gender-nonconforming, androgynous gay man and uses both they/them and he/him pronouns.

Born in the state of Colorado in 1967, Marquez recalls going to therapy as young as age three and being fit with diagnoses that assumed there was something wrong within their gender identity and expression.

“They called me ‘perceptually handicapped’ because I thought I was a boy,” said Marquez. “They didn’t even have the word ‘transgender,’ much less the word ‘intersex.’”

They explain that often gender identity and expression are often assumed to be linked to genitalia, and that’s simply not always true.

“My biological sex is intersex. We live in a world that thinks that should be in alignment with my gender identity,” Marquez said. “But my gender identity doesn’t match: it’s non-conforming, androgynous male. My sexual orientation confuses people even more. If I have an intersex body; they get confused when I say I’m gay.”

Annunaki, now married with three children, got advice and support from Sara Kelly Keenan, who in December 2016 became the first person in U.S. history to receive an amended intersex birth certificate. However, it was issued by her hometown of New York City, which has its own vital records department separate from the state.

Colorado is the first U.S. state to issue an intersex birth certificate, and its vital records office confirmed in an email Wednesday that it had made the decision to do so after receiving “adequate materials” from Marquez.

“The nonbinary rights movement has incredible momentum right now,” said Toby Adams, executive director of IGRP. “These changes to birth certificates and driver’s licenses on the state level—in Oregon, California, Washington, New York, D.C., and now Colorado—are also likely to have implications in how the Federal Government handles passports.”

With this massive victory for intersex advocates like Marquez, the hope is that this will encourage parents to wait on forced gender identities or assignment surgeries in order to “normalize” or alter their children. Marquez founded the ANUNNAKI Foundation which promotes the self-determination of gender and seeks protection of intersex and gender variant children from non-consenting surgeries and conversion therapy.

With societal perception slowly shifting away from the binary into a broader concept of identity, sexuality, and genders, Colorado is yet again on the forefront of progress.

Photo courtesy of ANUNNAKI Foundation Facebook