Most everyone, it seems, judges and journalists included, shares a delusion that there are only two genders, and that those genders must pair to produce offspring. Anything else is "unnatural."

Dispelling this delusion will take more than a few column inches in a Slate comment. But I can offer a few "for instances" to whet reader's appetites.

Human genders are not binary. Genders exist on a very broad continuum from very male to very female, varying by genetic and environmental factors. There are lots of people with other than the usual XX or XY chromosomal pairings: XXY and XYY, for example, to whom gender is often an open question. There are people with unusual, but not exactly rare, genital configurations which defy binary categorization. The slush of hormones which defines gender, influenced by both genetics and environment, varies tremendously across the population, too, and that variance delivers a multitude of appearances and behaviors.

There are millions of mildly, and some not-so-mildly, feminized males, the result of ubiquitous exposure to industrially-produced estrogen-mimicking chemicals. There are men choosing to use medical science to become pregnant and bear children. There are people treating themselves with hormones and obtaining surgeries to alter their primary and secondary gender characteristics in every direction, amplifying their gender or even reversing it. There is a whole smorgasbord of sexual preferences among all of these varied people - and they all pretty much believe it would be irrational and unreasonable for society to require them to ignore their powerful feelings of attraction and marry someone who does not appeal to them, or refrain from marrying at all.

Are children harmed by being raised in a nontraditional pairing? No study that I've heard about has found that being raised in a nontraditional pairing increases the likelihood of a nontraditional gender identity, nor that the children in such unions are harmed by them more than in traditional marriages (some say less). Against that backdrop, why don't we just throw up our hands and say, if two adults want to form a stable, loving relationship within which to raise children, let them?

Is it asking too much of journalism, do you suppose, to acknowledge gender identity as more than a merely binary matter, and to slam those foolish enough to insist otherwise, be they on the bench or elsewhere? A healthy dose of biological reality would help to dispel the binary gender delusion that grips our foolish nation and propels an unnecessary, and utterly ludicrous, debate.