Two twentysomething women were conversing in front of me at Reagan National Airport. Their language would have shocked my grandmother, who once admonished me for speaking words in her presence she deemed inappropriate. "Nice young men don't talk like that," she said. The offending words were "toilet paper." Nice young men? Who, or what, defines "nice" today?

Everywhere one looks, one sees a rejection of what previous generations called social norms, decency, virtue, values, propriety, modesty, integrity and standards that no longer exist outside of some individuals and families who have embraced them.

Various groups, "alliances," "majorities" and "coalitions" have tried to prevent or retard what they see as social decay through the political system. It should be obvious after repeated failures that this tactic does not and cannot work. That's because -- like those ancient Israelites -- too many prefer to worship things and are slaves to feelings, thus dulling their senses to the wisdom of the ages.

This possibility has not received much consideration. Instead, the debate has been dominated by those who argue that the fence is inconveniencing Palestinians who live along its route -- as it surely is -- and whether the International Court of Justice can be manipulated into condemning Israeli self-defense as it has never condemned terrorism. In fact, the court is likely to be so manipulated; the hearings begin Monday, February 23rd in The Hague and the UN's court is expected to act as a kangaroo court.

But what if all that is ignored, the fence is erected -- and it works? The benefits to Israelis are clear. Less obvious is that under such conditions it also would be possible to relieve Palestinian communities of the stress of Israeli military occupation. Tanks and troops could pull back. Curfews could be lifted. Checkpoints could be removed.

It all began on January 14, when the New York Times ran a front-page story, above the fold, headed, "Bush plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage." The authors were Robert Pear and David D. Kirkpatrick, the latter newly assigned to a year-long beat covering that exotic species, conservatives. The two were apparently on unfamiliar ground. Relying on unnamed "administration officials," their first sentence announced "an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage," possibly to be touted in the president's impending State of the Union. The initiative, the story continued, had been in the works "for months," cooked up by the administration and "conservative groups." The third sentence made the link with "pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage" in the wake of the gay-rights court decision in Massachusetts.

This was a remarkably misleading series of assertions. There was, in fact, no new Bush administration initiative; the old marriage initiative (announced in February 2002, passed by the House in May 2003, costing $300,000 a year, about a third of it to evaluate program effectiveness) was not mentioned in the State of the Union; and the backers of marriage education are, if anything, predominantly liberals concerned about the welfare of children and struggling mothers and fathers, with no common views on religion or homosexuality. To be sure, the body of the story included some accurate reporting, but the political misframing of the issue was picked up by journalists across the country.

I don't believe conservatives have yet devised a winning defense. Certainly not if we begin with a preemptive surrender on "civil unions." To offer civil unions as the compromise position is, in effect, to concede that the debate really is about civil rights rather than an aggressive campaign to transform the culture by replacing the traditional family as the cornerstone of social order with an amorphous category of sexual liaisons. Eliminate the normative family in the U.S., and who benefits? The Scandinavian situation offers a pretty good clue. Junk the family and its functions will necessarily be transferred to the state: to state day-care centers, welfare bureaucracies, and government agencies. But as long as we continue to debate gay marriage on the grounds preferred by the Left -- as a civil-rights issue -- the larger assault on the traditional family anchored on the sexual, emotional, and practical complementarity of one man and one woman will remain invisible.

In a Jihad, where the terrorists unite under the rallying cry of defeating the Infidels in the name of Islam, the most likely -- if not the only -- people to betray America in order to help the enemy are going to be Muslim.

That group of Muslims willing to commit horrific acts is certainly tiny, but a tiny number of Benedict Arnolds is all al Qaeda needs to wreak enormous havoc.

And as anyone who knows folks who have converted to any religion can attest, the converts often become, for lack of a better expression, hard-core. "Hard-core" indeed sounds harsh, as most passionate converts are devout in the best sense. Yet from the likes of John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, converts can become among the most radical.

The myriad ways in which men treated women as women -- such as opening doors for them -- all declared that women were feminine, i.e., different from masculine. That is why many feminists opposed men opening doors for women -- it reinforced notions of femininity, a value that feminism has sought to extinguish.

So, femininity is largely a dead concept. Ask most young women -- or men -- what it means, and you will get either a blank stare or a hostile reaction.

Thus, many women are now saying: "I am a woman. And I will declare it in one of the only ways left to me -- I will show you my female body."