Greetings all! I am a physiology professor and parent of 3 teens! We are in a deep red state and my kids are rare blue dots in their schools. During a conversation with my daughter, I realized the profound lack of information most kids her age have about sex (not the baby making kind), gender, and sexual preference. They are taught the bare minimum of human physiology in school. As the kids get older, issues of sexuality and sexual preference are naturally more common and more complex. And unlike the passive tolerance I saw when they were young (Isaac has two moms? Shrug. Pass the legos) there is far more judgment of their peers who are "different". I am surmising that in the absence of real scientific information, kids are getting their information from church. And, as we all know, churches down here in the south tend to reinforce only the most basic, binary male/female plug/socket version of human behavior. But there is hope for them! Ignorance can be cured with information. So help me with my simple plan...
Since I'm educationally inclined, I'm trying to generate a simple page that conveys the complexity of sex, gender, and sexuality and why marriage discrimination is wrong and about far more than whether you "agree with" homosexuality. The definition of marriage as strictly between "male" and "female" leaves a rather large group of individuals out. The entire LGBTIQ spectrum, in fact. So here is my quick fact sheet. Please help me edit and simplify. I want my kids to have a decent scientific basis for their opinions and some real information with which they can counter the homophobic arguments of their peers.
Marriage between a man and a woman sounds straight forward. But what makes a man a man and a woman a woman? The answer is a combination of chromosomes (sex), physical traits (gender) and sexual orientation. Each of these factors has both a predominant version and less common variations.
About 2 in every 1000 people in the US (between .25% and 1%) do not have XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes. Instead, they have either a single X or some combination of three sex chromosomes (XXX, XXY, or XYY).
Between 1 and 2 million people were born with genitals that are not clearly male or female and may not have active ovaries or testes to drive gender development.
Most individuals express a preference for forming relationships with a person of the opposite sex / gender. But about 2% men and women are attracted to individuals of the same sex/gender.
This means that between 3% and 5 % of the population – or over ten million people - fall outside the definition of a traditional relationship being between a “man” and a “woman”.
For comparison, that’s about the same number of:
People that have green eyes
People who are a twin
People who are vegetarians
People with a doctoral or professional degree of any kind
And even green-eyed twin vegetarian doctors can get married