Hundreds of pro-gay protesters tried to shout down religious leaders speaking against gay marriage to a crowd of thousands gathered at Seattle's baseball stadium Saturday. Protesters gathered in the stands after chanting and waving signs at participants as they arrived for the rally at Safeco Field. About 20,000 to 25,000 people attended the "Mayday for Marriage" worship service and rally, organized by conservative Christian churches around the state in support of traditional marriage ... Police estimated 1,500 gay rights protesters showed up outside the stadium, waving signs and chanting, "Bigots go home!" as they marched back and forth out front. A 60-piece marching band performed and passing cars honked in support.

Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago and several other academics have recently published a research project called "The Sexual Organization of the City." They've found that people construct highly evolved sexual marketplaces, venues where they go to find sex partners. These marketplaces, at least in cities, are incredibly localized; people are not inclined to cross ethnic, racial, sociological or geographical boundaries when looking for a bed mate. Each of these discrete marketplaces has its own rules, and the sex practices in one neighborhood may look nothing like those in the next ...

Second, sexual marketplaces are a rapidly expanding feature of society, and they are becoming more distinct from marriage marketplaces. Furthermore, as the sex markets become bigger and more efficient, people have less incentive to get married. As the scholars Yoosik Youm and Anthony Paik write, "Opportunities in the sex market act as constraints in the marriage market." The big problem here is that there is an overwhelming body of evidence to suggest that marriage correlates highly with happiness. Children raised in marriages tend to have more opportunities than children raised outside marriage. Over all, Americans are spending much less time married. They marry later and divorce at high rates, and remarry less and less. We are replacing marriage, one of our most successful institutions, with hooking up. This is a deep structural problem, and very worrying.

I am more troubled by Wax's point that children of single parents, on average, do worse than children of married parents. That fact calls into question my claim that both the single mother and the married mother are providing adequate care to their children. Should we deny benefits to single mothers? I think not, largely because I read the social science evidence more cautiously than Wax does. While children of married parents fare better as adults than children of single parents, the causal mechanism isn't clear. Single parents are, as a group, desperately poor and disproportionately likely to have less education, to live in bad neighborhoods with bad schools, and so on. Studies that isolate these sources of disadvantage find that the absence of a parent has relatively little impact.

Still, single parenthood poses a challenge for my project: why is it that society demands that only one parent to be bound by a No Exit obligation? Our society has decided, deliberately or by default, that it cannot compel both parents to provide continuous care to their children when they cannot or will not stay with each another. Although I take these trends as given, I am open to measures to encourage parental persistence. For instance, the law professor Elizabeth Scott suggests making divorce more difficult for parents than for the childless. Still, I think this will be an uphill battle.

The crucial difference is that income support aids family consumption, while caretaker resource accounts concentrate funds on parents' own life options. Of course, contributing to basic family expenses is a classic function of anti-poverty programs, and children's allowances might be a vital part of such an agenda: too many parents earn too little to support their children properly. I would point out simply that parental opportunity and child poverty are distinct, if related, problems. Not all parents who struggle for autonomy are poor; and not all those laboring under the burden of poverty are parents.

Professor William Doherty will direct a project to help lower-income urban families maintain two-parent households. Doherty said parents' breakups often precede a parent going on welfare. "Those children have a lot of risks for their future for poverty, for academic achievement, for psychological adjustment problems," Doherty said. The project will connect mentor couples with those wishing to get married. The mentors will be urban couples who had children outside of marriage but are now married and raising their children, he said. While other states have put money into existing services, the project is an attempt to discover a new way to solve social problems, Doherty said. "We're assuming that we don't know yet what's going to help," Doherty said. "We’re going to start in the community."

A study mapping the prisons built in the boom of the last two decades has found that some counties in the United States now have more than 30 percent of their residents behind bars. The study, by the Urban Institute, also found that nearly a third of counties have at least one prison.

I find in Tom Sylvester's post regarding Ann Alstott's proposal caregiver resource accounts plenty of reasons not to like it. It is almost comically out of touch with the needs and desires of most women raising children -- and perhaps more importantly, children themselves. Prof. Alstott proposes to make her care-giver accounts available to at-home Moms when they take classes or retire -- and not, as with working moms, available for the immediate cause of caring for children. Hello? Is it possible that at-home moms might want to use that money for what is likely their greatest priority at the moment -- raising their children well?

Alstott's idea drips with elitism and condescension for women who see their primary role and meaning in mothering. Under Alstott's proposal, you can have money to put your kid in daycare, or for pursuits that entail getting the kids out of your hair. She just doesn't tolerate using the funds for the work of actual mothering. Obviously, the main effect of the proposal would be to foster more non-mother child-care. Maternal equity, my foot!

You might also assume that a childcare proposal would have something to do with children. Don't jump to conclusions. Her proposed caregiver accounts, informs Alstott, "aim to expand parents' opportunities to live fulfilling lives and to do so in ways that accord with their own values." Substitute "Prof. Alstott's" for the word "their" in that sentence for the actual meaning.

And [the initiative] sounds good. It appeals to core constituents and seems innocuous -- if not downright reasonable -- to most everyone else. The few opponents are so ideologically diverse that their varied objections dissolve in a sea of "ifs," "ands," and "buts."

We may not know Bush's true intent for "Healthy Marriages," but it's somewhere in between a sop for "family values" conservatives and a nefarious Orwellian plot.

The idea of the federal government promoting marriage predates the Bush administration. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, was pitching similar programs to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

Pruett, director of medical studies at Yale University's Child Study Center, said that theoretically, "it is best to have a mother and a father who are biologically connected and who the state supports in raising the child."

"But once you move from the theoretical to the practical," he said, "it is the quality of the relationship that children have with their parents that is far more determinative of their eventual life outcome."

Caretaker resource accounts do not aim to maximize mothers' labor supply or wages. Instead, they aim to expand parents' opportunities to live fulfilling lives and to do so in ways that accord with their own values. Accordingly, it should be counted as a success rather than a failure if some parents happily use their new resources to work less or to combine paid work and child rearing in sequence, while others recommit themselves to paid work.

With the creation of caretaker resource accounts, the caretaker parent of every child under age 13 would be given an annual grant of $5,000, which the parent could use to pay for child care, (his or her own) education, or (his or her own) retirement savings in the current year or in any future year. Each participant would receive an equal share of public resources per year, and each would decide for herself (or himself) how to divide the funds among the three alternative uses. The program would expand parents' options to give them maximum freedom to shape their own lives as they think best. Parents differ in their values, talents, and aspirations, and they would use their caretaker resource accounts in different ways -- which is precisely the point. Suppose Abigail has a new baby. The government would establish an account in her name on the books of a government agency or private financial institution and would deposit $5,000 once a year. Abigail's account would receive annual deposits as long as she remained the child's caretaker parent and until the child reached an age at which most children need far less intensive care -- say, between 13 and 18.

Almad and thousands of other Muslims, taking advantage of a provision of the law in the province of Ontario, can now decide some civil disputes under sharia, including family disagreements and inheritance, business and divorce issues, using tribunals that include imams, Muslim elders and lawyers. While it is less than full implementation of sharia, local leaders consider it a significant step.
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Jewish courts, using the same methods, have been operating in Ontario for years. Such a court, called a Beit Din, deals with monetary, business and family disputes, but no criminal matters. "Jewish courts have been operating in Toronto for as long as Jews have been here, hundreds of years," said Rabbi Reuven Tradburks, secretary of the Beit Din of Toronto.

In a move gay rights advocates say is a thinly veiled attack on same-sex marriage, Senate Republicans this week will begin hearings in four committees to promote traditional marriage. A Republican Party memo obtained by the AP says that the hearings will represent a "full-court push to educate the public on the importance of marriage." Kicking off the barrage will be a Health subcommittee's discussion on "Healthy Marriage: What is it and why should we promote it?"

Utah's effort to help residents make good marriage decisions -- and stick with them after the "I do's" are exchanged -- is touted as among the most significant in the country. The Beehive State is one of seven noted for devoting dollars, political clout and resources to strengthening marriage and two-parent families in a new report from the Center for Law and Social Policy. The others are Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Virginia. The center's state-by-state listing of government-backed marriage policies and programs, released this week, is available on the Web at http://www.clasp.org.

"Edgy" movies for children are just one tiny part of a larger social trend: a blurring of all social boundaries that once set "scripts" for life. Children had a special status -- protected from the outside world -- and they dressed for the part in a way that made that special status immediately visible to themselves and the adults. Of course they chafed at the boundaries. Children always do. In the '60s, parents were told to let their teens rebel, explore their boundaries. Increasingly the same message is being given to the parents of tweens. In today's world, marketers reach inside the home and attempt to figure out not what's good for your daughter, because that is not their business, but what deep desires they can manipulate, stimulate and ostensibly satisfy in order to produce cold, hard cash. No evil geniuses here. Just creative businessmen doing what businessmen are supposed to do.

You say that California's divorce courts could hear cases involving gay couples if the state legalises homosexual marriage ... In fact, the state's law was amended last year to require that domestic partnerships are dissolved using the divorce-court system. Under the amended law, domestic partnerships are identical to marriages except in name and the application of the tax law. Thus, gay divorce will happen here whether gay marriage is legalised or not.

Why not draw a much brighter line between civil and religious marriage? That way, government officials would have nothing to do with what does or does not constitute a sanctified marriage. And clergy would no longer sign civil marriage licenses and intone "by the power invested in me by the state." Think of the benefits of this arrangement. If clergy weren't agents of the state, those Unitarian ministers couldn't be fined for conducting rites sanctioned by their church. And (should gay marriage become legal) evangelical ministers would never have to worry about government intrusion into the "sanctity of marriage" as understood and practiced in their churches.

If the word "marriage" is the main sticking point, let's call all civil marriages something else -- civil unions, perhaps -- and leave the definition of "marriage" entirely to religious groups.

It's fair to say that the all-important institution of marriage is being battered these days by the high rate of divorce and the large number of children being born out of wedlock. It is also fair to say, as some Democrats are indeed saying, that congressional hearings on the subject won't likely alter that reality. The Democrats may be wrong that the hearings being planned by Republicans are meant to draw attention to opposition to gay marriage.

As same-sex couples fight for their right to marry, some straight couples -- who could marry if they wanted to -- are deciding against it. Instead, they're registering as "domestic partners," an option offered by some cities and counties, mainly with gay and lesbian couples in mind. National statistics aren't available, since some municipalities don't track domestic partners' gender or make their registries public. But experts are noting early signs that, while the marriage rate continues to decline, these alternative arrangements are piquing some straight couples' interest.

More than half of all Californians believe gay and lesbian relationships between consenting adults are not a moral concern, and nearly a third believe same-sex marriages should be legalized, according to a Los Angeles Times poll. The poll also found Californians narrowly oppose adopting an amendment to the Constitution banning states from recognizing gay and lesbian marriages.

With all due respect, all your efforts to link racism and opposition to SSM suggest you don't have the foggiest idea of how orthodox religious folks view marriage. They see marriage as an institution that is ordained by God to (1) bring the sexes together in a one-flesh physical-spiritual union that overcomes the sexual divide and (2) to bear and rear children in a home with a father and a mother who bring distinct divinely-ordained gifts to the parenting enterprise. Moreover, many religious traditions teach that husband and wife serve as distinct theological models to one another, their children, and their communities of the distinct roles that Yahweh and Israel, or Christ and the Church, etc. play in salvation history. Same-sex marriage cuts right to the heart of the moral and theological meanings of marriage for orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Members of these traditions will not and cannot accept this redefinition precisely because it constitutes a frontal assault on their deepest beliefs. Talk of anti-gay bias doesn't begin to address the range of moral and theological reasons orthodox religionists are deeply opposed to SSM, reasons that have nothing to do with anti-homosexual animus.

Moreover, if Canada is any indication, orthodox religionists are also beginning to realize that SSM would have enormous implications for religious freedom and public education. For instance, religious institutions--especially religious institutions that focus on more secular activities like education or social service--that offer spousal benefits might be forced to give SS-couples benefits. (Think of the way that the California Supreme Court is now forcing Catholic Charities to pay for contraceptive coverage for its employees.) And public schools and other public institutions would teach children that gay and lesbian couples can marry just like anyone else. Thus SSM might well lead to a cultural war that makes the abortion conflict look like small potatoes precisely because SSM will be much more public than abortion. Orthodox religionists and their children are not directly affected by abortion. But they would be by SSM. And they will not like it one bit.

You write that young people are much more accepting of homosexuality than older people. You are right. But the public and civic battle has just begun in the sense that conservatives and orthodox religionists are just beginning to muster their resources and arguments on the issue. Churches, for instance, have been largely silent on this issue in terms of day-in-day-out programming. But that is beginning to change, as priests, pastors, and rabbis start to offer their congregants detailed arguments about this issue. If the issue continues to heat up, at least young people with a religious outlook will be exposed to a range of religious and secular arguments designed to shore up the inherently gender-complementarian nature of marriage. Over time, opinion among young people could shift away from support for same-sex marriage, especially as the evidence accumulates about the effect of SS-parenting on children. (Recall that it took social scientists almost 20 years to show that divorce and single-parenthood weren't good for kids.) Think this is unlikely? It may be. But consider how pro-life attitudes have increased dramatically among young people since the 1970s. Anything is possible.

But the bottom line is this: If SSM-supporters treat religiously-grounded opposition to SSM as simple bigotry they will only add gasoline to the fire. My hope is that opponents and proponents of SSM will try to engage the range of secular and religious arguments for and against SSM in a spirit of civility and respect. If they do not, this will get ugly. It's time to retire the racism-homophobia analogy. Everyone except a few academics knows that race and sex are not the same thing. So the two questions before us are as follows: are the differences between the sexes, and the unique power of the sexes to procreate, important enough to reserve marriage to heterosexual couples?

Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want. Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let 'em. If you and your government aren't implicated, what do you care?

So, sure, there are some legitimate objections to the idea of privatizing marriage. But they don't add up to a fatal objection. Especially when you consider that the alternative is arguing about gay marriage until death do us part.

What researchers at University College London have now found is that romantic and maternal love activate many of the same regions of the brain. The implication is that maternal love is the evolutionary basis, the foundation, for romantic love. The researchers, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, of UCL's Laboratory for Neurobiology, also found that love leads to a suppression of neural activity associated with critical social assessment of other people and negative emotions: The brain is told to go easy on people. The findings suggest that once you fall in love, the need to critically assess the character and personality of that person is reduced. The work could provide a neurological explanation for why love makes us blind.

Senate Republicans this week will launch a series of hearings to promote the value of traditional marriage, a move some Democrats are calling an election year ploy that is none of Congress' business.

"I believe that through these hearings, one will see there may be certain threats to marriage -- divorce being one of them," Stachelberg said. "But one of those things is not gay and lesbian couples seeking to be married."

Democrats say the publicity blitz smacks of politics and dismiss it as an effort to garner votes among the nation's largest constituency -- heterosexual married couples. "This is the kind of silliness the public finds appalling," said Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman, who teaches media, politics and law at Tufts University. "Talk about being totally and completely out of step. People don't need Republicans to tell them what a healthy marriage is." Bruce Cain, professor of political science at the University of California-Berkeley, called the motives "transparent." "The Republican Party believes that since the majority of Americans favor heterosexual marriage, not gay marriage, and since it's an issue the Democratic Party has a somewhat more complicated position on, anything they can do to keep the issue on the front-burner of politics is a plus," said Cain. Republicans concede the political dynamic surrounding the same-sex marriage debate in California, Massachusetts and Oregon was part of the reason for the hearings. But they stressed these sessions aren't designed to examine whether homosexual marriages should be recognized.