Leavenworth ? The American Civil Liberties Union will represent a transsexual charged with providing false information for her marriage-license application in Kansas, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Topeka attorney Pedro Irigonegaray will handle Sandy Gast’s case on behalf of the ACLU, said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.

Gast’s court appearance was continued Wednesday and rescheduled for March 31 because her attorney could not be there.

The ACLU’s involvement in the northwest Kansas case was based on “civil rights issues,” Kurtenbach said.

Gast, a 48-year-old man who lives as a woman and intends to be surgically changed to a woman, wanted to marry George “Georgi” Somers, a man who also is living as a woman. The Leavenworth couple had planned to have a wedding at a church in Topeka over the weekend.

Leavenworth County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Gast on Thursday after prosecutors received a tip from Somers’ daughter, Crystal Call, that the couple planned to marry.

“I don’t know how many people have had to spend six hours in jail” because they were accused of the misdemeanor of false swearing, Kurtenbach said Wednesday morning in Leavenworth County District Court.

Kurtenbach said the ACLU also would investigate Gast’s treatment while she was in jail. If Gast’s claim that she was strip-searched by a male officer is true, Kurtenbach said, “that was reprehensible.”

Gast, who was born Edward Gast, had her driver’s license and birth certificate changed to reflect her female identity. She provided documents to that effect when the couple applied for the marriage license.

Besides the state law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, a proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has passed the House and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

But Kurtenbach said Gast had “no intention of making this into a battle over marriage laws in Kansas” when she applied for the marriage license. He called Gast’s actions “innocent” because she considered herself a female.