After media coverage of “pregnant man” Thomas Beatie, transsexualism seems to have suddenly emerged, deus ex machina-style, to point out a variety of flaws in conservatives’ arguments against same-sex marriage, even to offer transgender same-sex couples a potential egress into marriage like a wormhole in space.

Beatie, whose story first appeared in The Advocate, the gay national magazine, got media and bloggers talking about marriage and sex changes in early April, culminating with an ultrasound prerecorded for “Oprah.” It served as kindling for endlessly rehashing how transsexuals fit into the legal picture—specifically how the conservative argument against same-sex rights can advocate normalcy by opposing rights for societal outliers like transsexuals, but not by showing support for gay men who’ve been with the same partner for decades.

The latest addition to the growing dossier came in Sunday’s New York Times, which reported on another legal quandary wherein a New Jersey same-sex couple—a man-to-woman transsexual married (now) to another woman—is more or less de facto legal, even in a state that doesn’t recognize homosexual marriages. Denise Brunner, formerly Donald, had surgery and began taking female hormones. Denise says her legal wife, Fran, “helped me literally buy my first bra and first wig.” They say they’re more concerned now with tax returns, which they still file jointly in violation of federal law, than whether New Jersey thinks they’re married.

But the Brunners’ situation falls into a sort of a wrinkle. As the Times story noted, marriages like theirs “are rarely challenged by government agencies because more conservative states do not recognize sex changes, and more liberal ones (like New Jersey) are loath to seem hostile to transsexuals.”

For liberals, it’s the exception that proves the rule. That is, the “world hasn’t fallen apart because New Jersey has a same-sex marriage,” as Denise Brunner told the Times. Or, to quote the impartial Times itself: The Brunners “offer themselves as Exhibit A on how the nation’s dizzying patchwork of marriage laws, which include the domestic partnerships of California and other states, may be out of step with people’s lives.”

Advocates of the rights of the growing number of couples like the Brunners (many of whom disputed the claim that the Brunners are even New Jersey’s first same-sex married couple, assuming others have likely also circumvented the law via this transgender loophole), argue that transsexuals are just a few snips and cuts south (to simplify and euphemize) from others on the plastic surgery spectrum, like biannual Botox injectees.

Also, transsexualism is a final frontier of sorts for same-sex rights. It’s uncharted territory. Even legal pros have a hard time teasing sense out of the convoluted web of states’ transgender law intersections. In its story on the Brunners, the Times mentions a 2000 wrongful death case appealed to the Supreme Court by lawyers for a Texas male-to-female transsexual named Christie Lee Littleton (the wrongful death was her husband’s, though the state annulled their marriage).

Attorneys painted this picture if she were to travel from Texas to New Jersey: “Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Texas, is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Texas, and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male”—in all, what both sides of the debate probably consider a lose-lose situation.

The Supreme Court refused to take her case, as it has all other cases involving transgender appellants, but the court of Oprah has not. In addition to Beatie’s appearance, the Brunners were also on her show in October.

When Thomas Beatie, a transsexual Oregon resident announced a pregnancy, reporters pounced on the topic with headlines like, “Pregnant man tells Oprah: It’s a miracle.”

Not quite. Beatie, born a woman, took testosterone treatments and got breast surgery but kept female reproductive organs, according to an April Reuters article. “So, this ‘pregnant man,’ Thomas Beatie?” wrote one blogger on mollygood.com, a celebrity gossip site. “Hate to burst everyone’s bubble and ruin all the press, but ‘he’ is actually still physically a woman. So, y’know, chill … Beatie has a womb and a menstrual cycle, people! Quit freaking out like he’s a seahorse.”

Beatie says the pregnancy raises questions for today’s culture. “Our situation sparks legal, political, and social unknowns,” Beatie recently wrote in the advocate.com, a lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender news site. “Is society ready for this pregnant husband?”

Beatie has already faced some response. “We have only begun experiencing opposition from people who are upset by our situation,” Beatie wrote in the advocate.com. “Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Health care professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognize Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive.”

A writer on the Latino pop culture Web site guanabee.com is supportive: “I think its awesome. I find it amazing and fascinating that people are willing to do so much (even to blur the line of gender identity) for the sake of love. Mr. Beatie is to be commended.”

A blogger on sacredscoop.com. disagreed: “What Beatie and other gay/transgender advocates are trying to do is blur the lines in hopes of pushing their agenda on the rest of the world. Their hope is to tear down traditional family values, and confuse the world into thinking different is normal.”

Does Beatie have an agenda? Why go public? And why decide to become a man but retain female reproductive organs? Beatie explained the motive and reason in the advocate.com:“I always wanted to have children. However, due to severe endometriosis 20 years ago, (my wife) had to undergo a hysterectomy and is unable to carry a child … our situation ultimately will ask everyone to embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal.”