I understand the fears over the decline of marriage. Most psychologists agree that stable marriages are the best arrangement for children, and children reared in single-parent homes are more likely to suffer poor educational achievement and to be lured into drugs, early parenthood and crime. But isn't that all the more reason to welcome gay marriage? At a time when marriage is rapidly losing its allure for so many heterosexuals, one of the most promising developments is the deep desire of so many gays to commit themselves to marriage, with all its rewards and sacrifices. Gays and lesbians deserve the right to succeed -- or fail -- at marriage just like the rest of us. When it comes right down to it, a constitutional amendment won't save marriage. That can only be done by couples, regardless of gender, one marriage at a time.

San Francisco's same-sex wedding march will continue unimpeded for what looks like several more weeks after a Superior Court judge refused to stop it Friday -- the second such ruling in three days. After the second ruling on Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into the fray, calling on the state attorney general to "take immediate steps" to halt the weddings. In a letter to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, Schwarzenegger directed the state's top lawyer to get a definitive court ruling declaring the city's actions to be illegal ... Earlier in the day, Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay refused to grant a temporary restraining order, meaning city officials can continue granting the licenses until both sides come back and fully argue the issue in mid- to late March. Judge Quidachay said in his ruling there wasn't enough evidence of "immediate and irreparable harm" to warrant an immediate halt to the succession of same-sex marriages at City Hall.

HUNDREDS OF people were camped out in the pouring rain outside San Francisco's city hall February 16, waiting their turn to join 1,700 gay and lesbian couples who were married in defiance of California state law. The scene in San Francisco was part of an outpouring of action around the country--as gays and lesbians stood up to George W. Bush and the bigots who want to deny their rights.

I agree that the SF mayor is on the wrong side of the law; the recently passed CA ballot proposition on marriage is unambiguous. The mayor may lose his job over this, and that's probably what should happen to preserve the rule of law. On the surface, it looks like yet another elitist government official ignoring the people's will, much as the MA justices did in Goodridge. Mayor Newsom has even been compared to former AL Chief Justice Ray Moore (ugh!), the guy who wouldn't move the Ten Commandments monument.

But beneath the legal wrangling, in the realm of human relations that underlies the formalities of government, something seems very different. Seeing people line up for hours, even days to get married, hearing that drivers honk their horns in support as they pass SF City Hall, and musicians spontaneously serenade the couples as they wait in line, it has such a different feel than the activist-led events we've seen so far in the SSM controversy. The mood reminds me a little bit of the late-80's revolutions in Eastern Europe; OK, on a much, much smaller scale ...gay marriage isn't the Berlin Wall for crying out loud.

That's I guess what bothers me so much. What's transpiring now looks, smells and feels like liberation from an oppressor; here are ordinary people, long denied the freedom to go about the business of their lives, and celebrating now that they are finally free to do so. It's kind of a scary thought; if the people of San Francisco are oppressed, at least on this one question, then their oppressors are the people of the rest of California, and the rest of the US. People aren't supposed to be oppressed in a democracy, are they?

"Our question would be, what's the government doing in the business of marriage in the first place?" said Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Given the state of marriage today, in light of no-fault divorce, it tends to be little more than a tax status." In some European nations, where marriage rates have plunged to unprecedented levels, various forms of "marriage lite" have been on the books for more than a decade. Couples in Denmark can opt for registered partnerships; half of the children in that country are now born out of wedlock. French couples can sign "civil solidarity pacts" that either party may dissolve on three months' notice. Three U.S. states - Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana - have moved in the opposite direction, enacting "marriage covenant" laws aimed at making divorce less easy. Couples choosing to enter into covenants, at the time they marry or later, agree to relinquish some of the grounds for no-fault divorce and are required to get counseling before calling it quits. President Bush's $1.5 billion proposal for strengthening marriage is slated to be worked into the welfare reauthorization bill. Several states already are dabbling in matchmaking through welfare, offering low-income couples subsidies for premarital counseling. West Virginia pays a $100 monthly bonus to married welfare recipients. "Encouraging people into marriage is a good idea so long as we know those people and their children will have healthy relationships. And when do we ever know that?" Cherlin said. "West Virginia offers just the kind of incentive that drives a woman on welfare into marrying an abusive man because she needs the money."

When reformers get into the habit of relying on lawyers and judges, they not only risk a self-defeating political reaction but may also lose the facility for building a majoritarian politics. That is surely one of the things that went wrong with American liberalism in the mid-20th century, and it would be a disaster to repeat that mistake. The Massachusetts court decision couldn't have come at a worse time, reinforcing the president's argument for conservative judges and handing Republicans an election issue. If an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage succeeds, the Massachusetts decision will go down as one of the great examples of judicial overreach in our history.

Despite the parade of horribles they haul out, their greatest fear appears to be that giving gay men and women the right to join legally and permanently with the ones they love will work out just fine, and that the American people will see that the fears being foisted on them are unfounded.

Leading Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Kerry is not necessarily opposed to a constitutional amendment to permanently ban same-sex marriage, he told National Public Radio's All Things Considered Feb. 9. Kerry was asked: "I'd like to turn to the subject of gay marriage. The highest court in your home state of Massachusetts has said that same-sex couples do have the right to marry. I know you've said that you oppose gay marriage, but would you support a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a heterosexual union?"

He replied: "Well, it depends entirely on the language of whether it permits civil union and partnership or not. I'm for civil union. I'm for partnership rights."

"I think what ought to condition this debate is not the term marriage as much as the rights that people are afforded," Kerry continued. "Obviously under the Constitution of the United States you need equal protection under the law. And I think equal protection means the rights that go with it. I think the word marriage kind of gets in the way of the whole debate, to be honest with you, because marriage to many people is obviously what is sanctified by a church. It's sacramental. Or by a synagogue or by a mosque or by whatever religious connotation it has. Clearly there's a separation of church and state here. ...Marriage is a separate institution. I think marriage is under the church, between a man and a woman, and I think there's a separate meaning to it."

Kerry said this holds true even for civil marriages that are not conducted in a house of worship. "Even for those that aren't, there's still two meanings," he said. "I mean, the state picked up the concept [of marriage] afterwards. It's a latecomer to the state."

At the National Press Club in Washington this week, the marriage advocates fought back.

In a stroke of either a) utter incompetence or b) diabolical cleverness, The New York Times recently published a front-page, above-the-fold headline: "Bush Plans $1.5 Million Drive for Promotion of Marriage," calling it an "extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage." The next day, the Times repeated its original error, labeling the marriage initiative a "new White House" plan.

According to an analysis of media coverage by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, the errors of the Times metastasized: "Within days," she writes, "scores of other news organizations picked up the story, with news stories and opinion pieces appearing around the country, including The Boston Globe, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Dallas Morning News and at least 25 other metropolitan newspapers."

The dominant message of the media? In a cynical ploy to placate the religious right, upset over gay marriage, the president had announced a new marriage initiative.

What's wrong with this story? First, there was no White House announcement, and there is no new election-year marriage initiative. A New York Times story generated a misimpression that spread virtually unchallenged through the press corps.
At the National Press Club, marriage leaders pointed out that the administration first proposed a marriage initiative in 2002. It has nothing to do with the same-sex marriage debate, and it has an impressive array of bipartisan supporters. "I'm a feminist liberal Democrat," Marline Pearson, a community college professor who teaches marriage education in Madison, Wis., said. "I think child care, jobs, education are all very important. But I got involved in marriage ed because I have seen what happens to my students who get derailed by bad relationships, by unplanned pregnancies, by domestic violence. This is a missing piece we have to pay attention to."

The grass-roots "marriage movement" is in danger of fragmenting over the question of gay marriage....
proponents are trying to make peace with each other over an issue as explosive for them as for the rest of the country.

"How do you speak about same-sex marriage in a way that respects the diversity of opinion in our ranks?" asks movement pioneer David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, a think tank on family issues. "Some of us are for gay marriage, some are against it, and some are morally anguished fence-sitters."

Says William Doherty, a marriage researcher at the University of Minnesota: "My fear is that people in organizations that cannot handle diversity in values will pull out of the marriage movement and create their own."

He and other members plan a news conference Tuesday to release a statement endorsing Bush's pro-marriage proposals. The declaration also publicly addresses gay marriage for the first time, Blankenhorn says.

"As individuals, we are not neutral on this question," says the statement, which has been signed by more than 70 members. "But as a group, our purpose is to work to strengthen marriage through education and community mobilization, not to lobby politically for, or against, a federal marriage amendment or any other proposals related to same-sex marriage."...

The marriage movement has been bitterly criticized by gay activists who fault it for not supporting gay unions and for endorsing federally financed programs that would exclude them.
"It is preposterous of them to pose as fair-minded advocates who support the stability of families when they would deny these programs" to gay people, says David Tseng of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays....

A bipartisan group of marriage educators and researchers say they may not agree on who should be in the White House or whether homosexuals should be allowed to "marry," but they believe government funding for marriage education is an idea whose time has come....

Marriage funding has been a national topic since January, when a front-page New York Times article implied that the Bush administration either had just made or was about to make an announcement about $1.5 billion for marriage funds.

Much of the attention was mocking....

...At today's conference, marriage supporters plan to debunk the idea that the marriage funding is a new, election-year "political ploy intended to please religious and social conservatives."

The pro-marriage movement began in the 1990s, they said. The Bush administration began its marriage initiative in 2001, Mr. Bush's first year in office, and the legislation for $1.5 billion in marriage funding over five years was introduced in 2002 in the welfare bill, which has not yet passed.

The Massachusetts and San Francisco events are a welcome indication that the nation is having a long-overdue discussion about the right of gay people to marry, and that the states are beginning to serve as laboratories for reform in this important area....They have ...started a national discussion of gay marriage, a very healthy thing in itself.

[Gottman] also has bad news for the defenders of traditional family values: gay and lesbian couples, as well as heterosexual couples that do not marry, hold on to the positive value of courtship better than straight partners who get hitched, he says.

The NYT reporter asks: To create this cloned embryo that was used for a new stem cell line, 16 Korean women donated 242 human eggs to your project. How did you find these remarkable volunteers? (note the breathless language: "remarkable volunteers")

Dr Hwang replies: In Korea like everywhere else there are young ladies who are curious about therapeutic cloning. Some heard about us and they contacted us with e-mail. Also, we sometimes gave lectures about our work. After we spoke, we received inquiries and we arranged meetings and discussed fully what egg donation meant. If they said yes, we enlisted them. We did physical and mental examinations. We asked if they understood what we were trying to do. We gave them a chance to change their minds.

...The news from South Korea underscores once again the critical need for both an effective global ban on human reproductive cloning and better information about fertility drugs used during egg extraction.

It is a myth that these drugs have been adequately studied and that reasonable informed consent is possible. ...

Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke.

And depending on your particular chemical make-up, monogamy might be easier or harder. What the ancient philosophers understood - that lust, romantic love and friendship are very different states of being - is being slowly borne out by science. Friendship or long-term bonding is the most complex and important for social stability. But as humans, we are bound to screw it up - or at least be tempted to.

The Massachusetts constitutional convention has adjourned, and will not reconvene until March 11. An amendment that would have defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, but that would also have created civil unions, was gaining strength and may well have passed. But legislators who favored gay marriage filibustered to prevent a vote, while legislators who opposed gay marriage angrily walked out.

This is all very interesting, of course, but I think the outcome on an amendment is a lot less important than the fact that in three months Massachusetts will begin to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples. No amendment to the Massachusetts state constitution can go before the voters for two and-a-half years. That's enough time for suits to be filed in all 49 states calling for recognition of gay marriage. It's also enough time for a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act to work its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. We could theoretically have gay marriage imposed on the nation by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court before Massachusetts gets a chance to vote on an amendment to its state constitution.

So what counts is that Massachusetts has let loose the process of attempted nationalization. The Massachusetts constitutional convention -- contentious and fascinating as it is -- is a side show. But what's happening in Massachusetts does give a sense of just how tumultuous things are going to get when similar battles begin to spread to the states. Given the degree of conflict, the pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to create a uniform solution (i.e. to nationalize gay marriage) is going to be immense. As I see it, within a few years, we are going to have a national solution, one way or the other. Either the U.S. Supreme Court is going to nationalize gay marriage, or we are going to pass some sort of Federal Marriage Amendment. In other words, the same race going on right now in Massachusetts (between the courts and the amendment process) is going to be replicated on a national scale.

...That's the problem with Concerned Women and similar groups. They say "bad" things about homosexuals, but -- is everything they say completely untrue...?

I dislike how statistics and scientific research concerning homosexuals, their lifestyle, gay parenting, and possible causes of homosexuality is so loaded with political correctness and issues that it is not possible to do it "sine ira et studio", unbiased....

One does not have to look far to realize the moral underpinnings of our nation are crumbling. Indeed, America has been careening down a "slippery slope" since the 1960's when Madeline Murray O'Hare successfully oversaw the removal of prayer from our schools...Religious symbols are being removed from public display. Law-abiding Christians are being falsely accused and arrested. And now, marriage, the most sacred of our institutions, is being threatened!

The Church is called to be salt and light. Christ's command to preach the gospel and make disciples remains our primary mission. But for too long the church has been silent on critical moral and social issues. It can be silent no longer! We must begin to restore the foundations which our forefathers laid. And, for the sake of our children, we must begin now.

Feb. 14, 2004 -- On this Valentine's Day, eavesdrop on young sweethearts in a quiet place in the middle of New York's Grand Central Terminal. The conversation, featured on Weekend Edition Saturday, is part of an oral history project.

When Michael Wolmetz, 25, brought his girlfriend, Debora Brakarz, 26, to the booth, she probably didn't expect what he had to say to her. Their recording is among several hundred that have been made since October at the StoryCorps booth. They are part of a project that will preserve such moments for posterity at the Library of Congress.

It's been fascinating watching the Marriage Movement wrestle with gay marriage. The fact that you are just now understanding Andrew Sullivan's point -- which he has been making for over almost a decade and seems perfectly clear to most gays and lesbians -- demonstrates how difficult it is to grasp abstract concepts that create some level of cognitive dissonance and which require us to step back and figure out what they mean.

In the past few weeks, you and Elizabeth have voiced a continuing frustration that no one wants to have the debate you want to have: that marriage is such an important and fragile institution that it cannot bear the weight of admitting social outcasts whose values are disliked by a large segment of society and who stray too far from the social tradition of male-female marriage (okay, that's my metanalysis of your position). Your debate, the one you believe we should be having, serves as the same type of cognitive dissonance for advocates of SSM that Andrew's argument appears to have for you. Equality is easy to understand. Abstract concepts of tradition and fragility are less difficult to understand. How is the institution of marriage harmed by allowing lesbian pioneers Del Martin and Phyl Lyons -- who have been together for 50 years -- to get married?

For weeks, there have been postings criticizing the NYT's portrayal of the debate and the underlying feeling I get is a frustration of: why don't people understand us. We don't hate, we aren't like THEM, we just care about marriage. Instead of complaining about how no one is having the debate you want, maybe it's time to try to change the debate. Instead of complaining about being misunderstood by the media, maybe it's time to take on both sides of the equality debate.

While there have been postings attacking the SSM equality argument, neither you, Tom, or Elizabeth ever appear to attack the other side of the debate. Carrying the water against SSM is a strong, organized movement of social conservatives. SSM is [not] the first time they have attacked gay equality arguments. In fact, some could argue that groups like Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, Traditional Values Coalition and other social conservative groups have been built on opposing gay equality. Those are the people fighting your battle against SSM. Yet, one never hears your criticisms of that movement, postings about the extreme positions they have taken, the discussions of how they have co-opted marriage movement language in a political effort to oppose gay equality in a variety of settings, not just on the SSM issue.

If you don't like being labeled a bigot, maybe it's time to distance yourself from the social conservative movement and criticize your friends. A sign of a mature political and social movement is when it is prepared to take on its allies as well as its opponents.

Media were quick to cover Bush's support for faith-based initiatives, including his billion-dollar abstinence program and his healthy marriage initiative, so that, in his words, "people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate against them again." Will media now report that LGBT taxpayers will be required to fund their own discrimination?

President George W Bush today travelled to Florida to kick off the Daytona 500 stock-car race and court "NASCAR dads" -- a key voting group in the 2004 campaign. "Gentlemen, start your engines," Bush told the 43 drivers at Daytona. More than 200,000 people saw the race in person and an estimated 40 million watched on television ... Just as "soccer moms" were the sought-after demographic group in the 1996 presidential race, NASCAR dads are the hot voting group this year.

Here, due to the isolation under the previous regime, militant feminism and postmodern relativism did not really have much influence, because women were routinely employed and the previous regime enabled it with plenty of creches and kindergardens, cheap or for free. As a scientist, I was very lucky to have all these facilities in a 5 min walk, so it was quite possible to be mother and professional. My younger colleagues aren't so lucky -- they aren't well paid and the daycare costs are increasing. Having kids is also much bigger obstacle to career than before, so they mostly don't choose to do it. Even in Germany, which is substantially richer than my country, about 40% of women with university education don't have any children.

Immediately after the political changes, demographics started to develop in the unfavorable way towards less and less children. True, young people have discovered other possibilities than an early marriage, but even those in the simpler professions don't have families because of the financial reasons and impossibility to buy or rent an apartment for a reasonable price. To have children means sacrificing the family standard two levels at least, and if it is a family of, let's say, a shop assistant married to a plumber -- they'll be under the poverty line all of sudden. Of course, government [then] starts to meow about who will pay the social security ...[in] 10-20 years. ...

I think in your latest post you unfairly borrow a newspaper's description of a sentence in an opinion to deride that opinion. The answer of the four justices did not suggest at all that the legislature drop the word marriage in a footnote. Rather it was responding to a footnote of a separate opinion by Justice Sosman, who thought civil unions were constitutional, that asked hypothetically whether such a move would be constitutional. It is the two justices who signed onto Justice Sosman's answer in support of civil unions that deserve your derision. In fact, it is the majority that refers to marriage as a vital and esteemed institution. It is the minority that refers to it as a "package of State law rights and benefits." The footnote in the majority's answer merely pointed out that since the issue here was one of equal protection, it might be permissible for the legislature to adopt Sosman's suggestion. By no means were they advocating this, nor were they even ruling on its constitutionality.

I wonder too how homosexual couples feel about the Times trotting out a pair of penguins as an argument for acceptance of gay marriage? (Sure, it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I think this was still their point). I don't think I would be too flattered. Twenty years from now I imagine the NYT will be educating the unenlightened among us on the all-pervasiveness of polyamory among whooping cranes.

I read... that some researchers had induced stem cells to differentiate into egg cells in vitro. ...If it works, this offers the possibility of producing an unlimited number of egg cells without harming women, since stem cells can divide indefinitely. Of course, that doesn't overcome the overall philosophical/moral issues of cloning, but at least it could take the exploitation of women out of the equation. [The citation is Science, Vol. 300, Issue 5623, 1251-1256, May 23, 2003]

Indeed, with "welfare reform" and its penalizing of single mothers, pressure on "deadbeat dads," and the Bush administration's heterosexual-marriage promotions, the U.S. government tries to force women and men back into traditional matrimony. What needs explaining is why, under such circumstances, women of various ages and sexualities are finding more to say in defense of marriage -- and why some feminists, like me, are even fighting for it. What transformed me from a rebellious critic of the institution into a vocal and explicit advocate ... came from my recognizing and honoring the growing desire of some of my lesbian friends and relatives to enjoy the protections that marriage now extends only to heterosexuals.

Alisha Woods has a dilemma: whether to marry her boyfriend. She isn't hesitating for the usual reasons -- nothing to do with family meddling or uncertain emotions. She and her boyfriend have been dating for three years and are thinking about tying the knot. And since they're both high-school graduates trying to get by on low-wage jobs, they are well-suited to benefit from President Bush's $1.5 billion initiative to promote marriage among low-income couples. Or, at least, they should be. But the president's plan does nothing to help Woods and her boyfriend surmount the big obstacles they face as a couple. The problem: Woods's boyfriend is an ex-convict, and a variety of federal policies make marriage -- a potential source of stability -- more difficult for ex-felons even after their release from prison.