Things are not always what they seem and, for many, that makes life difficult and hard to explain.

Caitlin Jenner now is what she seems to be: a woman. She has explained, eloquently and at length, how difficult it was for her to live as a man, especially a man who by dint of his own hard work and determination, became an international symbol of manhood . . . and not just any manhood; manhood on an Olympic scale; the living embodiment of the pinnacle of masculine physical and athletic perfection . . . for the entire world.

She has also addressed, eloquently and at length, how difficult it was, for her and for those close to her, at first, to understand.

Happily, for her and us, the social and cultural norms of her youth are, for an increasing number of people, not the social and cultural norms of today.

We have learned that one's sex and one's gender identification can be different. Nature, we have learned, not only determines our DNA and our X-Y chromosome configuration, it determines how our neurons fire and interact with each other and to stimuli, and thus how we feel about ourselves and others.

We have also learned that being open and accepting about these realities of human nature harms no one in any way.

Indeed, the more open and accepting we are, the less pain and suffering we inflict on innocent people who, as human beings (not to mention our fellow Americans) have a right to be not only protected from baseless, self-righteous, all too often mean-spirited discrimination and harm, but a right to equal justice under the law.

The same is true of "racial" self-identification.

Biologically there are no clear bright lines that determine "races." The notion is a human cultural construct that, throughout history, has done more harm than good . . . some of it murderous on a scale that was once unimaginable.

Rachel Dolezal, once President of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP, consciously decided that her cultural affinities were "black" rather than "white."

What conceivable difference to anyone does that make?

There was once a time when a single drop of "black" blood condemned one to slavery. Now we know we all have the moral equivalent of that one "drop." We are all descended from sub-Saharan African ancestors.

German laws, based on similar Virginia laws, defined who was "Jewish" and who was not, with deadly consequences.

We now know that such distinctions were and are as absurd as they were unspeakably cruel.

We've come a long way in the three-score and ten since my own birth . . . a year in which Jim Crow prevailed, Jews and Catholics alike were banned from Country Clubs, universities and law firms, women were kept in their well-defined "places," being gay was illegal, and innocent men, women and children were being incinerated "to serve one or another permutation of the notion of the greater good" throughout the Far East, Western Europe, and in the death camps of the Holocaust.

There is still a long way to go.