The best way to argue against this may be to grant their point -- to a degree. That is, we can all agree that a mom provides something different than a dad and vice versa. Yes, children with a "missing" parent are missing out on something. But take that point and build on it by demonstrating that society -- good, Christian society -- already sanctions families without a mother or a father.

For example: Birth can be a dangerous process, and sometimes mothers die from complications during childbirth, leaving children and widowers behind. If society values a matched set of mother and father over any combination of parents that excludes one or the other, shouldn't these opponents of same-sex marriage also be lobbying for laws to force these widowers to give up their children? ...

The point is, all children are "missing out" on something. Children of widows and widowers who do not remarry are missing out on having a mother or a father. Children of divorce are missing out on having biological parents who live together. Children from poor families are missing out on economic advantages. And children of opposite-sex parents are missing out on the unique benefits of having two mothers or two fathers ...

What strikes me as particularly disgusting about this argument against same-sex marriage is how anti-American it is, how far it lands from the values of every freedom-loving man and woman. Most Americans, if asked, would say that families led by widows and widowers deserve every support the community can offer. Why not families led by two men or two women? Why not support all families equally? To argue anything else is elitist and vile, suggesting favor for government interference in our families that's more fit for a society like Nazi Germany than our country born of the will toward individual freedom.

[Wade] Horn said he has been striving for the past two months to disentangle the marriage initiative from the gay-marriage debate. He traced the entanglement to articles in the New York Times in mid-January that – in his eyes – gave the impression Bush's marriage plan was a new, election-year initiative aimed at placating conservatives upset by gay-marriage developments. "Both these debates are worth having, but they are separate debates," Horn said. Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and a leader of a coalition called the Marriage Movement, said other news stories that followed the Times articles amplified on the same themes, and "flagarantly mischaracterized an important public policy issue." "The marriage initiative is not an election-year ploy," he said. "But the damage was done. We'd talk to people about it, and they'd say, 'Oh, that anti-gay-marriage thing.'" The New York Times has defended its articles. Said spokeswoman Catherine Mathis: "We believe our coverage has been thorough, fair and balanced."

"It was so cool," said Gabriel, 13, who served as the ringbearer, after standing in line overnight with his parents. "I always accepted that `Yeah, they're my moms,' but they were actually getting married. I felt thick inside with happiness. Just thick."
...
"Before it was, `Oh, your parents are just partners,' " said Max Blachman, the 13-year-old son of lesbian parents in Berkeley. "Now, they're spouses. So it's a bigger way of thinking about them."
...
Speaking of his mothers' marriage, Alex said: "It is something I always wanted. I've always been around people saying, `Oh, my parents anniversary is this week.' It's always been the sight of two parents, married, with rings. And knowing I'd probably never experience it ever."
...
Like members of other minorities, children of gay and lesbian parents have to negotiate social and economic differences, which can be "big emotional freight," Professor Patterson said, adding, "Knowing your parents have made a commitment to stay together and take care of you forever makes children feel more secure."

In a sense, Alex Morris, a precocious 11-year-old who has dreams of becoming president, has an embarrassment of riches -- two sets of doting parents. His biological mother, Paula Morris, 43, just married her partner of 16 years, Cory Pohley, 44. The pregnancy was planned cooperatively with their friend Tony Humber, 45, Alex's father, who lives with Harvey Yaw, 47, his partner of 23 years. They all share responsibilities for Alex, who travels between the houses every few days. They sometimes vacation together.

This year's presidential race underscores a curious truth about American politics today: Elected officials love to talk about "family values" and "investing in our kids," but shy away from proposing anything big or new that would actually help them.

Government mandates that reservists not lose their jobs when they are called to duty and offers them free health care and pensions. Only the churlish consider these benefits to be a subsidy or suggest that patriotism should be its own reward. Yet when it comes to guaranteeing that parents don't lose their jobs for doing their duty, too often we are told that this is just another form of welfare or affirmative action.

In reality, both soldiering and nurturing children are vital forms of public service. One is a traditionally male calling and the other female, which may well explain why veterans enjoy a panoply of benefits and their own cabinet-level agency, while mothers don't. But in the long run, both roles are vital to a nation's survival, with the new realities created by aging and the deepening demand for human capital formation making successful parenting all the more so. A society that fails to recognize, much less honor, its debts to those who form the next generation may expect to vanish.

If conservatives genuinely oppose same-sex marriage because they fear it would harm straight marriage, they should be willing to let states that want to try gay marriage do so. If, on the other hand, conservatives oppose same-sex marriage because they believe that it is immoral and wrong by definition, fine -- but let them have the honesty to acknowledge that they are not fighting for the good of marriage so much as they are using marriage as a weapon in their fight against gays.

The true problem with gay marriage is that it consigns gays to a life of mimicry and pathos. It shoehorns them into an institution that does not reflect the best possibilities of their own sexual orientation. Gay love is freed from the procreative burden. It has no natural function beyond adult fulfillment in love. If this is a disadvantage when children are desired, it is likely an advantage when they are not -- which is more often the case. In any case, gays can never be more than pretenders to an institution so utterly grounded in procreation. And dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights only consigns gays to yet another kind of mimicry. Stigma, not segregation, is the problem gays face. But insisting on a civil rights framework only leads gays into protest. But will protest affect stigma? Is "gay lovers as niggers" convincing? Protest is trying to hit the baseball with the glove.
The problem with so much mimicry is that it keeps gays from evolving institutions and rituals that reflect the true nature of homosexuality. Assuming, as I do, that gays should have the option of civil unions that afford them the legal prerogatives of marriage, isn't it more important after that to allow quiet self-acceptance to lead the way to authentic institutions?

The stigmatization of homosexuals is wrong and makes no contribution to the moral health of our society. I was never worried for my children because they grew up knowing a gay couple that lived across the street, or because several family friends were gay. They learned early what we all know: that homosexuality is as permanent a feature of the human condition as heterosexuality. Nothing is gained in denying this. But neither should we deny that the two are inherently different. The gay marriage movement denies this difference in order to borrow "normalcy" from marriage. Thus, it is a movement born more of self-denial than self-acceptance, as if on some level it agrees with those who see gays as abnormal.

[Rove] also said the gay marriage issue is beginning to help Bush, because polls are starting to shift in Bush's direction, with more people opposed to same-sex unions. But Rove implored the activists to add their voices to Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to ensure that Bush is not perceived as standing alone on the issue.

About three dozen clergy members gathered at the Sioux City Convention Center Wednesday to renew a commitment to promoting healthy, lifelong marriages, starting with premarital counseling. Many had signed the Siouxland Marriage Agreement in 2000 when it was first introduced here by the Northwest Iowa Region of Marriage Matters, a national organization begun 20 years ago in Modesto, Calif. Marriage Matters works to encourage clergy to insist on premarital counseling to better prepare couples for marriage, and to support and strengthen existing marriages.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save.

It's the same point I was making at greater length in my essay, "We're All Sodomites Now." It's particularly apposite to Stanley Kurtz's baseless assertion that same-sex marriage causes modernity's transformation of marriage, rather than being a result of it ... It's for these reasons that I find drawing the line at gay couples to be so morally troubling. Enforcing one rule for the majority and another rule for a tiny minority is so gratuitously unfair it runs the risk of being understood as pure prejudice.

Elizabeth's response to Donald Sensing's piece Save Marriage? It's Too Late noted that the 50 percent of unintended pregnancies prove that sex is not quite divorced from procreation, and that marriage is still necesary. But her refutation of that argument begs another question: If marriage's ability to regulate sex stems from the bond between sex and pregnancy - and if marriage has proven to be so inadequate in controlling the sexuality of straights when its reproductive capacity is somewhat diminished -how could it hope to regulate gays and lesbians' procreation-free sexuality? SSM or civil unions may be useful and just for other reasons but assuming for the sake of Mr. Sensing's argument that marriage can only tame reproductive sexuality, speculations that marriage will stabilize gay sexual behavior are wishful thinking.

Although I have been willing to entertain the idea that the government should get out of the marriage business entirely, I am beginning to see the problem here. On the face of it, the argument makes sense. After all, to get civilly married one doesn't need to promise a lifelong committment or to intend to have children. One doesn't even need to agree to share property if you have a pre-nuptial. Two people need only feel affectionately toward each other. In this light, one could make a very effective argument that legally, civil marriage has declined to the point that it makes no sense to keep gays out. In fact, that is exactly the argument that is being made.

Secondly, the "civil union" compromise simply reeks -- legally speaking -- of the separate but equal institutionalized discrimination of the pre-civil rights days. After all, if there is not an appreciable difference between civil marriage and civil unions with regard to what is expected or demanded of the couples in them, how long will such an artificial "separate but equal" distinction stand? Eventually, without an amendment, the distinct category of marriage will fail to legal challenges.

...it makes sense that the government should get out of the marriage business altogether and only offer "civil union certificates" that would serve essentially as tax documents for couples, any couples, who live together. Then, the argument would go, the government could leave marriage as a special designation for the churches which would not carry civil weight, but would respect tradition and be "sacred."

The problem with this is that some churches are now willing to confer marriage to homosexual couples... G.W. Bush has the opportunity to be recognized as the man who saved 4000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition if he can find the courage to champion a Federal Marriage Amendment.

At a time when I am trying to be open and understand why people so staunchly oppose gay marriage, comments like Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio's ("Bishops Assail Gay Marriages as a Threat," news article, March 10) not only offend but confuse me as well.

His self-described absurd reduction that granting basic civil marriage rights to same-sex couples would lead to arguments in favor of inter-species marriages is weak and ill founded. Is this a learned man of the cloth speaking, or a taunting schoolyard bully without a real argument?

Please, do not compare my love for my partner to that of a pet. Do not compare the civil rights due us as citizens of this country to that of domesticated animals. Surely the difference is glaring.

I am prepared for people not to agree with gay marriage. Indeed, it is a difficult subject within the gay community. There cannot, however, be an open discourse without well-founded, educated arguments.

CLAY FRANCIS
New York, March 10, 2004

Just a minor clarification regarding ministers who refuse to officiate at same-sex weddings. While the "stripping of civil authority" penalty might be constitutional in such cases, I think it would be a really, really bad idea. Such a law would marginalize people with sincere religious reservations against SSM, and would only harden anti-gay attitudes in conservative congregations.

I must say I'm disgusted at the UU ministers' arrest. What could be a clearer violation of church-state separation than arresting clergy for performing a religious ceremony? If there is a law against ministers' "solemnizing" same-sex marriages, the worst penalty that could be justified is to nullify those marriages and revoke the ministers' civil authority. The same would be true of fundamentalist ministers who refuse to officiate at (legal) same-sex weddings; the first amendment absolutely forbids the government from compelling clergy to perform (or not perform) their religious duties.

(The DA) Williams said he decided to press charges because the marriages were "drastically different" from religious ceremonies since Greenleaf and Sangrey publicly said they considered them civil....

Greenleaf and Sangrey were charged with solemnizing a marriage without a license, the same charges leveled against New Paltz Mayor Jason West, who last month drew the state into the widening national debate over same-sex unions.

...In a statement, the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association said its ministers have been officiating at religious marriages for same-sex couples for more than 35 years.

...(the minister) Greenleaf, who acknowledged performing the ceremonies in New Paltz knowing the couples did not have licenses, said she signed an affidavit for the couples and considers the ceremonies civil.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated... and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious.

The Ulster County district attorney filed criminal charges yesterday against two Unitarian ministers who performed same-sex marriage ceremonies in New Paltz, N.Y., after a court had barred the mayor from doing so.

Many who have closely followed the national debate about same-sex marriage said yesterday that this was the first time members of the clergy have faced prosecution for conducting rites sanctioned by their church.

...The district attorney, Donald A. Williams, said…that the ministers, the Rev. Kay A. Greenleaf and the Rev. Dawn Sangrey, "have publicly proclaimed their intent to perform civil marriages under the authority vested in them by New York state law, rather than performing purely religious ceremonies."

At issue, he added, is whether they had confirmed that the couples had marriage licenses. It is a misdemeanor punishable by up to $500 or one year in jail for a member of the clergy or a government official to solemnize an unlicensed marriage.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.
If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women, what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples?

I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God. But traditionalists, especially Christian traditionalists (in whose ranks I include myself) need to get a clue about what has really been going on and face the fact that same-sex marriage, if it comes about, will not cause the degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.

In Massachusetts, the only state where the court has already mandated same-sex marriage, the deliberations have a particular urgency: Lawmakers last week cobbled together a compromise amendment designed to provide an alternative to the court ruling by banning gay marriage but establishing same-sex civil unions with the same legal rights.

To many, it's a compromise - albeit a shaky one that pleases neither side and may ultimately not pass - designed to shelter an institution that has strong religious significance.

But in practice, some legal scholars warn that the compromise could itself pose a threat to religious liberty, by putting state pressure on churches to accept the concept of civil unions to some degree.

The amendment "may do ... more serious and permanent harm than [the court ruling] itself from the standpoint of protecting the religious liberty of individuals, churches, and other religious organizations," a group of experts from Harvard and other law schools told the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the church's public policy arm.

Nearly half -- or 47 percent -- of New York City residents believe gay marriage should be illegal, while 40 percent believe it should be legal, according to Daily News poll released Monday.

The survey found about 14 percent of those polled had no response when asked about the issue.

There was wide variance among ethnic groups, with whites the most supportive of legalized gay marriage (50 percent said it should be legal) and blacks the least (63 percent said it should be banned). Among Latinos, 41 percent said it should be legal and 41 percent said it should be banned.

They're breaking the law. The politicians are illegally authorizing the marrying of gay and lesbian couples. It doesn't matter how you feel about gay marriage. Laws are laws, and until they're changed, they need to be followed.

Marriage was particularly powerful in this regard. "Many of the men who were high-rate offenders in their youth were also subject to binge drinking, and tended to commit many of their crimes with peers," says Sampson. "Marriage tended to break that cycle; often the wife would intervene in the drinking pattern and help the man shift peer affiliations. The wife of one man we interviewed said, 'It's not how many beers you have, it's who you're drinking them with.'"

"And until gay couples are allowed to marry, there can't possibly be decent studies of whether the honorable estate confers the same benefits on kids whose parents are the same sex as it does on those who have a mom and a dad."

...the admittedly weak evidence is now sifted for indications that gay parents and their kids do in fact diverge from heterosexual families--and in advantageous ways. Dip into a recent book called The Gay Baby Boom, by Suzanne M. Johnson and Elizabeth O'Connor, and you'll find the muddled data often summoned as proof of the distinctiveness of gay child-rearing, rather than its equivalence to the heterosexual version. Out comes a portrait of egalitarian, consistent, harmonious, and "authoritative" (warm but not lax) lesbian co-parenting that moms and dads might learn from.

All the evidence--as both sides acknowledge--is seriously flawed and doesn't begin to supply anything like solid support for either the hopes of gay family harmony or the fears about scarred children and skewed parenting. And until gay couples are allowed to marry, there can't possibly be decent studies of whether the honorable estate confers the same benefits on kids whose parents are the same sex as it does on those who have a mom and a dad. In the meantime, it's quite clear that the absence of good science won't--and shouldn't--settle a fraught debate. What will help clarify it are experiences like mine, watching my sister and her partner sharing the hard work and the happiness of raising their daughter. I can't think of a better argument for gay marriage than that.