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Salon
Salon
Politics
Ira Chernus

It's time to tear down the gender dam

What makes a good society? Is it a guaranteed right to pursue happiness, as our Declaration of Independence proclaimed? Perhaps, as Gandhi said, it's providing the poorest and most vulnerable among us with the means to control their own lives. But what happens when it's the pursuit of happiness that makes someone most vulnerable?

Let me introduce you to my child, my one and only. They — and, no, it wasn't as hard as I expected to get used to the gender-neutral plural pronoun that they prefer — are brown-skinned, Mexican-American, secular-Jewish, and gay-married. In a country where Donald Trump is still admired by some 40% of the public, don't imagine for a second that my child, with all those identities, isn't horrifyingly vulnerable.  

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