But the ruling -- as Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his angry dissent -- inevitably raises the far more contentious issue of whether such recognition should be extended to gay couples. We think it should, not because the Constitution requires it, but because it is the right thing to do.

If different visions of marriage are to coexist peacefully, the government must get out of the marriage approval business. Instead of dictating a one-size-fits-all contract (the terms of which can be retroactively changed by legislators, as happened with the ��no fault�� divorce revolution), the government simply should enforce the voluntary agreements of people who want to build a life together.

If you click on this story about the Kennedy/Cuomo breakup, The New York Post gives you �sponsored links� to �Divorce online� and �Easy online divorce.� What�s up with that? Are people supposed to say, �Oh, Andy Cuomo and Kerry Kennedy are getting divorced, maybe I should too?� Should a Rupert Murdoch property be promoting this marriage-destroying device? Um, yes, actually, given Rupert�s ditching his own for a newer model�.

The reason filmmakers can cut to a cranky old Southern white guy with a big placard screaming about how "God Hates Homos" is that, probably, the majority of people against gay marriage are against it for reasons similar to this--either they are bigoted and hate gay people, or have no reservations whatsoever in marginalizing the gay community. They're probably not pro-civil unions, or for equal benefits, or anything like that. I doubt anybody but those in the intellectual pro-marriage movement really put any thought into serious arguments--about how gays getting married will affect the future of the institution.

So yes, putting the arguments of Stanley Kurtz et al. against pro-gay-marriage arguments makes intellectual sense when you're discussing good policy decisions. But in terms of numbers of people, these articles really can't avoid focussing on what the majority of the country is thinking.

"It's very helpful to be very clear, direct and keep it simple. �Mommy and Daddy are not going to be married. They're going to live in different houses. You'll sometimes live with Mommy, and sometimes live with Daddy.' Just very, very practical,� said Dr. Alison Johnson, a child psychologist.

The old battles over family structure and sexual orientation are things of the past, as foreign to young Canadians today as debates over segregation. Who you want to have sex with, which god you choose to worship, or how many parents you have are non-issues. Young Canadians hold this social tolerance -- this freedom -- as a moral principle.

An eclectic assortment of men's groups, family law reformers, church groups and academics has attracted the support of some prominent male politicians to promote fatherhood. Labor MP Mark Latham, Children and Youth Affairs Minister Larry Anthony, One Nation senator Len Harris, independent senator Brian Harradine and Senate president Paul Calvert, turned out yesterday to help the Fathering Forum launch its 12-point plan for fathers. The draft plan includes establishing a Ministry of Fatherhood or an Office for the Status of Fatherhood and redressing the "gross inequity" between funding for men's and women's issues.

Children of divorced parents who are separated from one parent due to the custodial or non-custodial parent moving beyond an hour's drive from the other parent are significantly less well off on many child mental and physical health measures compared to those children whose parents don't relocate after divorce ...

One of the arguments against same-sex marriage is that the simple fact of allowing gays to marry will weaken marriage. I think the point Rick tried to make is that gays are not the ones who are weakening marriage, hetros are. All of the problems with marriage have been created by hetros, not gays. Same-sex couples aren't even allowed to get married so how can they be responsible for the weakened condition of marriage? Allowing same-sex couples to marry won't further weaken marriage and may just strengthen it. We won't know for certain until we allow gays to marry. From a purely civil point of view, whether or not gays will weaken marriage is really beside the point. Civil marriage is disallowed to a group of otherwise qualified people simply because of the gender of their partner. As a civil matter straight people can marry and form either strong or weak partnerships - the government does not regulate the quality of the marriage, nor should it. It is a false argument to use the weakening of marriage (a value judgment) to justify denying gays the right to civil marriage.

Heritage Foundation research proves that, on average, married people live longer, have a better education, make more money and are less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

Meanwhile, the 1996 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health proved children raised in single-parent homes are much more likely to be depressed and to have developmental, behavioral and emotional problems.... (emphasis added)

"Straight society puts shows like 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette' on TV -- I can't imagine a bigger threat to the institution of marriage," a businessman named Rick said. "And what is the divorce rate?" It's 50 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Clearly, heterosexuals are the biggest threat to the institution of marriage.

My boy is eight now and very much part of my life. He has his own room in the house my partner and I bought last year, and sleeps in it (when he's not trying to sleep in our bed) on Thursday nights of one week and on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights of the next. These school holidays he'll spend most of the time with us, though his mum can't bear the thought of being apart from him for two weeks straight, so he'll be seeing her somewhere in there ... Last Friday my partner, who is eight weeks away from giving birth to our first child, and I took my boy back to his mother's house. He had been with us for eight or nine nights straight, while his mother had been at "sleep school" with her six-month-old baby. The three of us entered the house that my ex and her partner have bought, and chatted with my little boy's stepfather and my little boy's grandmother while my little boy's mother put her other little boy to sleep. Then she came downstairs and we all chatted some more before my partner and I - my little boy's stepmother and his father - left.
As we drove away, a kind of euphoria washed over me. My son frequently talks about us all as his family (the dog makes it into the clan as well), and for that brief moment it really did feel possible that we could co-exist in some kind of extended harmonic state. "That felt fantastic," I told my partner. And it really did.

Most New Zealanders (66 percent) believe it is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married. Very few respondents believe that a bad marriage is better than no marriage at all (3 percent). This is reflected in the fact that just under half of those surveyed (48 percent) agreed that divorce is usually the best solution when couples can�t seem to work out their marriage problems.

"Female Integration," an explosive new book making headlines and the talk-show circuit here [in Norway]. It's based on a recent report to the Norwegian parliament by the Oslo-based Human Rights Service (HRS) and is being viewed as a window on larger Muslim immigration patterns in the rest of Europe. The book's comprehensive statistical analysis of immigrant marriage patterns in Norway shows that members of most non-Western immigrant groups are, in overwhelming numbers, not only marrying within their own ethnic groups, but marrying partners - often their own cousins - from their countries of origin.