"But it does move," Galileo supposedly muttered under his breath, after he was forced to recant. Today we know that Galileo was right.

Today, the advancing science of gender -- and how it will affect our legal concept of marriage -- is challenging church authorities in the same massive way that Galileo's discovery did. They're treating new gender knowledge as heresy (though they don't dare call it that). In my opinion, these unbending church attitudes -- and the state and federal laws they're prompting -- will crash on the same rocks of evidence where wreckage of other churchy notions has piled up for centuries. The fact is, gender cannot be scientifically defined the way the righters want to define it...any more than the universe could be defined the way the medieval Church insisted.

If a "man" and a "woman" can't be forensically defined the way the church people insist, marriage can't be defined that way either.

When the existence of XX and XY sex chromosomes were first discovered in 1905, they instantly were seen by many as Adam and Eve's reflection in DNA. Then the biblical notion that "Eve was created from Adam's rib" went on the rocks, as scientists learned that XX, not XY, is the default gender. Starting in the mid-1900s, research kept pushing deeper into this gender frontier, farther and farther from orthodox Christian teaching.

In my research on LGBT sports history, I found gender emerging as a major issue, equal in importance to sexual orientation. Starting in the 1960s, sports bodies all over the world wrestled with scientific challenges to their chromosome testing of women athletes and their blind belief that "real women athletes have to be XX." Indeed, I noticed that antiquated ideas about gender -- which were accepted in sports as the poster image of "male" and "female" -- often determined how LGBT athletes were treated, and whether they were allowed to compete.

By the 1990s, the International Olympic Committee had to bow before the evidence piling up. Beyond that growing list of women whose tests hadn't come up XX, there loomed a vast range of variations that science had now identified. At some point the IOC may have started wondering how many male medal-winners could pass a chromosome test! There are 47, XXY's and 47, XYYs. XXXY's and XO's and XXYY's. Not to mention XYs born without the gene that turns on the androgens. And mosaic XXYs who have XX chromosomes in some cells, and XY chromosomes in others.

In 1999, the IOC finally had to admit that their testing policy for women athletes was scientifically ridiculous. Athletes were fed up with the testing, and angry about it -- enough of them to leverage the international sports bodies. Athletes damaged by the policy were suing the IOC, and winning. So the IOC voted to discontinue testing on a trial basis.

During that same year, 1999, the 4th Texas Court of Appeals went the other way, with a decision that has become case law. In Littleton v. Prang, Judge Phil Hardberger wrote an opinion that boiled down to this: unchangeable XX and XY sex chromosomes, not genitals (which can be altered by surgery), are the basis of legal definitions of gender. The decision denied validity to a marriage in which one of the two partners had gone through a surgical gender reassignment and obtained a new birth certificate Judge Hardberger didn't even bother to ascertain the actual chromosome identity of either husband or wife, and he was clearly ignorant about half a century of scientific discovery that gender is not something you can put in a box.

It took three and a half centuries for the Catholic Church to admit they were wrong about Galileo. But in 1979, Pope John Paul II finally ate crow on this issue. Let's hope we don't have to wait that long for our self-appointed American Popes to admit they're wrong about gender.

I think we are still in the early stages of discovering the human universe, the way Galileo and Kepler and other astronomers were starting to discover our solar system during the Renaissance. Today we are getting more familiar with that planetary system of ours. It seems more intimate now -- NASA can land robots on distant moons and asteroids, and the Hubble telescope can look closely at Pluto and capture fuzzy images of other systems way, way out there in other galaxies where other planets are moving around their own stars. But there's still a lot to discover about humans right here at home. And that includes "gender realization."

Our country is now defining gender and marriage strictly as an XX-XY deal. That is a horrible human-rights mistake. As it did to the couple in Littleton v. Prang, this legal position could invalidate thousands of marriages. If pushed into legislation, it would bar from marriage hundreds of thousands more persons who are born with sex-chromosome variations. For 47,XXY alone, the figures are one in every 500 live births. With the U.S. population topping 300 million, that is 600,000 people who are 47,XXY. Add in the other variations, and you have millions of Americans who could be denied the right to marry -- most of whom probably don't identify as gay or lesbian or bi. So this is not just a "gay issue." With time, these millions of disenfranchised Americans may be angry enough, and activist enough, to demand change.

Several other recent court decisions also came down in favor of chromosomes. But these opinions are hopefully setting the stage for a trial of the century. The right case, the right lawyer, the right expert witnesses, and a judge who isn't living in a Bible bubble, could shatter the religious right's notion of "gender heresy," and leave it on the wreckage heap of history, along with the Earth-centered universe. Hopefully, when that happens, even a conservative U.S. Supreme Court would have to agree. They'd look really stupid if they didn't.

The rights and benefits of marriage must be opened to all, regardless of which chromosomes or how many chromosomes they might be born with, and whether they ever have surgery or not. I suppose our country will still cling to the legal formality of M or F -- but at least people would have freedom and flexibility about how they choose to identify.

That legal victory would logically have to open the rights and benefits of marriage to same-gender couples as well. Indeed, the gender issue -- which is being kicked to the curb as an alleged political liability by some gay activists right now -- may well be won in the courtroom, not at the polls or in the legislative arena. Gender may well become the cutting edge of victory for us all.

For those who want to take action on the Arizona Feb. 11th hearing, go to Equality Arizona.