Speaking as a person who has watched from the sidewalk as the Gay Pride parade made its way down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue one balmy summer's day, I have no confidence at all -- not a jot, tittle, nor smidgeon of confidence, sorry -- that opening up marriage to homosexuals will raise the general level of seriousness and respect which the institution enjoys in our society. The contrary effect seems to me infinitely more probable.

Be all that as it may, I don't think it can be denied that the Britney-wedding fiasco is an embarrassment not just to the people involved, but in some way to the rest of us too.

Gay marriage is a big idea that deserves national debate. Nonetheless, social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

The sacrament of marriage is under attack like never before. Our popular culture is reducing marriage from eternal love to a temporary business merger, an elongated slumber party, with adults playacting at junior-high style "going steady." When the going gets tough, no one hangs tough. Marriage is no longer a commitment. It is merely the legalization of infatuation, which when followed almost immediately by irreconcilable differences, can be voided.

Bush argues that his proposal would strengthen America's borders. I fail to see the logic in this either. Are we going to have any less of a problem with illegal entry into this country merely because we grant legal status to millions of people, even if we are thereby better able to track them?

The president says that his plan is compassionate because it would guarantee the rights and legitimacy of illegal workers. I think there are wiser and more compelling needs worthy of our compassion. We shouldn't undermine the rule of law in the name of compassion.

The public is beginning to see the danger that gay marriage will be brought to them without a vote. A New York Times poll in December found that 55 percent of Americans favor a constitutional amendment to define marriage in the traditional way. That is not a large enough number to ensure passage, but it is a strong one given how new the amendment is in the political debate.

Even among supporters of an amendment, however, there has been considerable disagreement about what precise form it should take. We have defended an amendment that would accomplish three things. First, it would reserve the word "marriage" for the union of one man and one woman: No court or legislature would be able to create "gay marriage."

Second, it would ban the federal or state governments -- again, whether directed by a court or a legislature -- from granting benefits that are conditioned on non-marital sexual relationships.

Third, the amendment would block the courts, at both the federal and state levels, from second-guessing a legislature's decision to reserve a benefit for married couples....

Somehow played down is the fact that the search for "life" on Mars -- proof, as the enthusiasts have it, that we are "not alone" in the universe -- is not a search for sentient beings but rather a search for evidence that billions of years ago there might possibly have been a few microbes. It's hard to see how that sort of information is going to heal our cosmic loneliness, let alone lead to the construction of condo units on Mars.

None of which is to say that it isn't interesting or important for NASA to send robotic probes to other planets. It's interesting in the way that the exploration of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is interesting, or important in the way that the study of obscure dead languages is important. Like space exploration, these are inspiring human pursuits. Like space exploration, they nevertheless have very few practical applications.

The retired four-star general said he will discern a prospective judge's position on abortion not with a litmus test, but by reading his previous decisions to ensure that the judge has never upset existing judicial precedent.

"I don't believe people whose ideological agenda is to burn the law or remake the law or reshape it should be appointed whether they are from either side," he said during an interview with editors and a reporter.

The spiritual decline has only accelerated in the 25 years since. We live in a political/economic nexus that not only permits but actually protects those who practice evil. In the slavish and mindless pursuit of liberty, we've ended up with a system that guards the rights of pornographers to commodify sex, of advertisers to entice people to hedonism, of executives to pursue a life of greed, of abortionists to kill innocent human life.

This is not a godly system, though it is a system under God -- or, more precisely, under God's judgment. The prophetic words spoken against Israel long ago are tragically timely: "Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds" (Isa. 1).

Retaining the phrase "under God" is not going to protect "Christian America" from functional secularism. That earthquake has already shaken our nation. But the phrase will continue to signal the source of our liberties, and to whom we stand accountable for the misuse of liberty.

A majority of the public thinks traditional marriage is important enough to preserve as an ideal, no matter how many may fall short of it....Surrounded by bad television, worse movies, anti-religious attitudes of judges and certain liberal activist groups, a pervasive sense that "anything goes," most of those responding to the New York Times/CBS News Poll apparently find a constitutional amendment in support of marriage a much-needed line in the sand. They think we have already gone too far, too fast on too many things.

[We] don't have a position on it, but I'd just tell you personally, whenever anybody starts "monkeying" with the Constitution it makes me very nervous, they better really have thought through and know what they're doing. I know there is a Defense of Marriage law out there that I've heard about. And it would seem like that may be the better mechanism -- to see how that works and give it a chance.