How much difference can one word make?
Some Virginia legislators seem curiously eager to find out—and if they do, the people of the commonwealth may be worse for the experiment.
Senate Joint Resolution 249 (and its House counterpart, H.J. 9) is now working its way through the state’s General Assembly. If enacted by two consecutive legislatures and approved by the people, the proposed amendment would alter Virginia’s constitution to say that any lawful marriage must be recognized by state and local officials without regard to sex, race, or—and here’s that ominous word—“gender.”
What’s the difference between “gender” and “sex?” Well, the latter is fixed: a person is born and remains either a man or a woman. The former is fluid, distilled from the notion that one’s sexual identification is somehow different from (and more important than) one’s natural biology … and can change sometimes even over the course of a day.
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