Transgender Woman's Family Presents Her as a Man at Open Casket Funeral
Friends of a 32-year-old Idaho woman who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm last month said they were shocked to find that her family had cut her hair short and dressed her in a suit for her open-casket funeral, presenting her as a man. Jennifer Gable, a trans woman born with the name Geoffrey, had been presenting as a woman for the past few years.
The Miami Herald points out that there's no mention of Jennifer in Gable's obituary. It mentions her job at Wells Fargo, her marriage and divorce, and the schools and churches she attended as a child, but identifies her as Geoff throughout. It uses male pronouns and an old, male-presenting photo.
But all the stories friends shared on the page are about Jennifer.
"She would not have wanted to relive the horrible life of Geoffrey," Gable's friend Brandan Klosterman told the New York Daily News, "She wouldn't want to be buried that way."
Gable's parents, who reportedly didn't speak to her anymore, were apparently behind the decision to bury her as a man. "There was a lot of bigotry from her family," Klosterman said.
"Her father erased her identity either though ignorance or arrogance," Human Rights Campaign Board member Meghan Stabler, who knew Gable, told the Miami Herald, "But who knows what the parent was going through?"
The funeral home that handled Gable's burial said her death certificate identified her as male.
"The death certificate says Geoffrey AKA Jennifer Gable," an employee of the funeral home told the Herald, "The last few years she lived as Jennifer. They buried him as Geoff. A tormented situation for all those involved."
