Little Ben was an active, well-nourished baby who had had an unusually tumultuous gender history. After the physical exam was completed and the room cleared out, I got to talk to Mr. Jones privately. The Joneses had been told they had a baby boy when he was delivered at a small, rural hospital. But a few days later they received a panicked call from the hospital: “Your child’s a girl! Take him to UCLA right away for surgery to become a girl!”

FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS, the rallying cry of those attempting to prevent

marriage equality has been that allowing gay marriage will undermine

traditional family values. If this is true, traditional family values

should be showing substantially frayed edges in Massachusetts, where

gay marriages have been taking place for over five years. … It turns out that family values have not come apart at the seams since

same-sex marriage came to Massachusetts. Even more surprising and

intriguing is the fact that gay marriage and strong families actually

go statistically hand in hand.