Ok, I finally had some time to mess with it more. You actually pointed me in the right direction by stating that I was making it more complicated than it needed to be.
When I set up the databindings, I used the tool provided on the combobox control itself (the little arrow in the upper corner of the combobox in the designer). Apparently using that does things differently than using the databinding functions in the properties box.
In this case, I removed the existing combo box and started over, this time not using the controls tool, and setting up the binding for the "Text" property to queries datasource, and populated the list collection like I normally do in the properties box as well. This time I got the following in the generated designer code.
Me.ComboBox1.DataBindings.Add(New System.Windows.Forms.Binding("Text", Me.BindingSource1, "Gender", True))
Me.ComboBox1.FormattingEnabled = True
Me.ComboBox1.Items.AddRange(New Object() {"Female", "Male", "Undetermined"})
Me.ComboBox1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(165, 150)
Me.ComboBox1.Name = "ComboBox1"
Me.ComboBox1.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(121, 21)
Me.ComboBox1.TabIndex = 3
As you can see, this time it kept the Items.AddRange, and bound the Binding Source's "Gender" member to the Text property rather than the SelectedValue. I'm still not sure why the previous behavior took place though. At least this particular problem appears to be solved. Changing the gender on an existing record did not display a different record, and it
did update the table when SubmitChanges ran.
I learned something new today, and I appreciate all the help. Sometimes it just takes a kick in the head to make me think simpler than I do.