Looking for middle ground, a good number of Americans are apparently willing to settle the question in favor of civil unions, while attempting to preserve "marriage" for heterosexual couples.

In the end, both sides must know that this is an unsustainable posture. Once civil unions are recognized, they will effectively be considered equal to marriage and, though the word "marriage" may be reserved for heterosexual couples, the institution of marriage will have been displaced as the central organizing stackpole of human society.

At the same time, there is some real value in protecting the word, even as the social definition of marriage is radically revised. Moral conviction and prudential judgment are almost certain to collide as thoughtful legislators do the best they can to fight in defense of marriage.

Ardent supporters of homosexual marriage in Massachusetts are now virtually certain that they have won. They expect their Supreme Judicial Court to deflect any calls for a stay in its decision. Regardless of the proposed constitutional amendment, the Court demands full legal marriage -- not civil unions -- for same sex couples in the state. As one advocate explained, once that happens, there will be little chance of reversing the precedent.

Who says that "under God" must have precisely the same nametag for every American citizen? I recently participated in a local interfaith forum at which the Christian told the Muslim that Jehovah would not allow Muslims into heaven, and the Muslim told the Christian that Allah would not allow Christians into heaven, and the only thing on which the two could agree was that I, the Jew, would certainly not go to heaven. Meanwhile, I asserted to deaf ears that Yahweh, the omniscient, eternal God to whom Jews turn in worship, judges people by the content of their character, not the dogma to which they subscribe.

Why can we not at least concur on a "threshold" definition of "God"? "God," as I see Him/Her, should at minimum (emphasize, "at minimum") be understood as the sum of all the forces of creativity and moral good in the universe. Certainly, this is a definition to which every honorable person -- monotheist, polytheist, pantheist, deist, even atheist -- can subscribe. We each give that "God" different names. And, atheists may choose to use no name whatsoever, but they can certainly still affirm the virtues of creativity and moral rectitude.

Once enacted, the law will double the penalty for any boyfriend, husband, or thug who harms or kills a fetus in the course of beating or killing a pregnant woman. More broadly, it will enshrine in federal law the principle that killing a fetus is legally equivalent to killing a child. That's exactly the principle the Supreme Court rejected in Roe.

Advocates of UVVA say it won't affect abortion rights because it stipulates, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the prosecution...of any person for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman, or a person authorized by law to act on her behalf, has been obtained." But the exemption is plainly illogical. Imagine a federal ban on gay marriage that stipulated, "Nothing in this section shall apply to a daughter of the Vice President of the United States." A gay marriage is a gay marriage. A child is a child. Once the embryo is defined as a child, and killing it is defined as killing a child, abortion at any stage of pregnancy becomes murder -- immediately in theory, and eventually in law.

What we have here is a generation that has learned to parrot ideas about abstinence without fully comprehending them. As the New York Times put it, several of the kids they talked to had a “grab bag of reasons” for waiting. But those reasons weren’t strong enough to keep Jasmine, for instance, from panicking and offering sex to get her boyfriend back after a fight. (Fortunately for both of them, he said no.) Jasmine hasn’t been taught to see a picture that’s bigger than her immediate circumstances. And she’s not alone: According to a recent government study, 88 percent of teenagers who take an abstinence pledge end up having sex before marriage.

Our approach needs to be even more “comprehensive” than that of the so-called “safer-sex” advocates. Having six children, I can tell you that we need to meet these kids where they are and teach them to focus on long-term goals, not stopgap solutions. We need to show them examples of strong marriages, so they can see there’s something worth waiting for. Most of all, we need to teach them about sex within the context of a clear and consistent worldview -- a worldview that emphasizes human dignity; the importance of stable families; and respect for their Creator, for themselves, and for others. This approach is exactly the opposite of the piecemeal messages that the kids are getting today from all kinds of sources, which means it might just be new and different enough to capture their attention.

"Activist courts" have properly come in for severe criticism by those in our circles who are alarmed by the attacks on traditional marriage. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. The dry rot in our foundations extends far beyond the courts. Michael and Tonya Hartsell were betrayed not just by their local elementary school, but by a whole national system of teacher education that for a generation has valued "diversity" more than it has valued the basic skills of a teacher. Virtually all of America's college and university systems-including way too many Christian institutions-are in on that treachery.

To the traitor courts and schools, you must also add the treason of corporate America. You can't blame a few wacko judges in Massachusetts or misled left-coast mayors for telling companies like PW and Amazon what they should approve and disapprove. The leaders of some of the big publishing, entertainment, and news conglomerates are just as much to blame....We didn't arrive where we are all of a sudden. The frog's been in the pot longer than we think. And the number of cooks who've been turning up the heat is a whole lot bigger than most of us have realized.

The only course for people who still care what God thinks is to follow the instructions of Paul the Apostle: "Come out from among them and be separate." John Wesley believed in absolutes that those who claim him as their spiritual ancestor have abandoned. He wrote: "But the Christian rule of right and wrong is the word of God, the writings of the Old and New Testament; all that the Prophets and 'holy men of old' wrote 'as they were moved by the Holy Ghost'; all that Scripture which was given by inspiration of God, and which is indeed profitable for doctrine, or teaching the whole will of God; for reproof of what is contrary thereto; for correction of error; and for instruction, or training us up, in righteousness" (a reference to 2 Timothy 3:16).

Dammann isn't the first lesbian ordained in the Methodist Church, but she should be the last tolerated by church members who are faithful to something higher than the shifting winds of cultural change. At the Methodist church trial, a majority of jurors failed their God and Methodism's founder. They have lost their authority to speak for God or to man on God's behalf. Methodists would be well advised to seek a denomination where God and not man is the supreme authority.

The United States of America is the only country in history to have defined itself as Judeo-Christian. While the Western world has consisted of many Christian countries and consists today of many secular countries, only America has called itself Judeo-Christian. America is also unique in that it has always combined secular government with a society based on religious values....

The battle over whether America remains Judeo-Christian or becomes secular like Europe is what this, the Second American Civil War, is about.

Having served both the 42nd and 43rd Presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats' agreed timeline of the last decade -- to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, but, alas, just as he had dotted every "i", crossed every "t" and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office -- "That carpet under the desk could use replacing. Oh, and here's my brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, which you guys really need to implement right away...."

I don't know how good Clarke was at counter-terrorism, but as a media performer he is a total dummy. He seemed to think that he could claim the lucrative star role of Lead Bush Basher without anybody noticing the huge paper trail of statements he has left contradicting the argument in his book.

The statement "One nation under God" is a statement of political philosophy, a shorthand rendering of what it said in the Declaration of Independence: "That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that governments are established to secure those rights. Just because the God-word is in it doesn't render it religious, or devotional, or ritualistic, or anything. Therefore, it is not even an Establishment Clause issue at all.

For a court to say that this phrase "under God" is like reciting the Lord's Prayer or some religious ritual is...bending the common-sense concept as well as ignoring 200 to 300 years of American history where these kinds of statements were routinely made by government officials, and were not viewed as devotional acts but were viewed as appropriate public displays of the principles of what government the United States.

How long is it before some Islamic leader gets the message that America is not serious about enforcing its marriage norms? If marriage is an individual civil right, it cannot be a social norm. A norm guides and shapes individual behavior, to produce a common good. An individual right is a license for each individual to decide for himself what good to seek. How can an individual right to marriage exclude Muslims who want more than one wife? Or bisexual women who would like to share a husband?

What will happen if we fail to affirm a national definition of marriage? Sex, love, and intimacy are private things. Marriage is a public act. A person who marries undergoes a change in status that others must acknowledge. That's why the advocates of single-sex marriage won't settle for civil unions. They hope and intend for their vision of marriage to become the new norm. If the marriages of same-sex couples are to be publicly acknowledged as the full equivalent of marriages uniting husband and wife, everyone's ideas about marriage will have to change.

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.

Legal commentators may think the court is poised to resolve some of these controversies. Ho, ho, ho. We the people will somehow have to resolve them for ourselves. We really don't know what we believe anymore -- I mean, as a nation.

The staid religiosity of our forbears compels and persuades less powerfully than of old. Nor, in my view, could we restore it simply by overturning the jurisprudence of the past four decades, starting with the decision to outlaw formal prayer in public schools.

We would first have to work out our disparate views on spiritual independence -- on our fast-evolving commitment to avoid community standards of belief and action. Where in the past we might have deferred (generally) to authority, now we say, chirpily, "Over to you..." Whatever you think. Follow your bliss. Your truths, my truths. If it feels good, do it....

How the high court will negotiate this matter -- are we "one nation under God" or not? -- God alone can say.

This is the way terrorism must be fought. It needs to be decapitated. It needs to be discouraged with overwhelming force. It needs to be met with greater terror.

I know this is not politically correct. I know we're all supposed to give lip service to the "peace process." I know it is not considered kosher to encourage Israel to take out its terrorist enemies the way the U.S. takes out its own.

I don't care.

Three cheers for the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Who was Yassin?

He was a terrorist clothed in the garb of a holy man. He repeatedly said the land of Israel is "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day." Well, Judgment is here -- at least for Yassin.

Within a few short years, a major dividing line has become evident -- with those churches endorsing homosexuality on one side, and those stubbornly resisting the cultural tide on the other.

The homosexual rights movement understands that the evangelical church is one of the last resistance movements committed to a biblical morality. Because of this, the movement has adopted a strategy of isolating Christian opposition, and forcing change by political action and cultural pressure. Can we count on evangelicals to remain steadfastly biblical on this issue?

Not hardly. Scientific surveys and informal observation reveal that we have experienced a significant loss of conviction among youth and young adults. No moral revolution can succeed without shaping and changing the minds of young people and children. Inevitably, the schools have become crucial battlegrounds for the culture war. The Christian worldview has been undermined by pervasive curricula that teach moral relativism, reduce moral commandments to personal values, and promote homosexuality as a legitimate and attractive lifestyle option.

It was the ultimate campaign stunt: The president, clad in a navy uniform and white gloves, at sea on a sunny morning, standing on the deck of a giant titanium-hulled ballistic-missile submarine. He looked on smartly as the military began a weeklong exercise to unleash its triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers in the biggest nuclear doomsday drill since the coldest days of the Cold War....

An American president well could have been run out of office for personally commanding and celebrating such political theater. The commander in chief in this case, however, was Russian President Vladimir Putin. The date was Feb. 17, less than a month before the March 14 elections that everyone expected him to win. Bezopastnost-2004, as the strategic command and staff exercise was called, was a mock nuclear attack on the United States, the largest since Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev ruled from the Kremlin in 1982.

There is, to be sure, a time and a place for talking about America's failures and weaknesses. But that occasion is not when America is under direct attack by terrorists.

There is also a time and place to talk about the weaknesses and failures of traditional marriage. But that occasion is not when marriage itself is being assaulted by moral terrorists.

You can be pretty sure of this: In neither case are those folks who speak so humbly and self-effacingly really interested in improving and rebuilding the institutions they are criticizing. What they really want is to replace them with something altogether different.

The war on terror is not a figure of speech, it is an inescapable calling of our generation. We know that this way of life is worth defending, there's no neutral ground. There can be no separate peace with a terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence and invites more violence on all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by united and decisive action.

Before the war started, I repeatedly called on the President to build a genuine coalition to reduce the military and financial burden on the United States, to go to war only as a last resort, and to have a plan to win the peace. I voted to give him the authority to go to war only when he promised me and other members in Congress that he would do these things. He broke those promises.

So long as the terrorist attacks that shocked Spain were thought to be the work of homegrown Basque extremists -- the notorious ETA -- terrorism was to be given no quarter. Spaniards understand there can be no compromise with those killers.

But when the clues pointed to al-Qaida, Spain's reaction was different. It was the government, not the terrorists, that was blamed for the horror. The Mideast is so far away. Why get involved?

"Our prime minister has gotten us into a terrible, completely wrong war," said one young teacher. "And because of it, I spent yesterday and today going to funerals...."

And now that the terrorists seem to have succeeded in Spain, who'll be next to falter - Italy, Poland, Britain, Australia? Whose spirit can be sapped by a few strategically placed explosives? It is not just skyscrapers or train stations that terrorists seek to destroy, but a nation's will.

When confronting an existential enemy -- an enemy that wants to terminate your very existence -- there are only two choices: appeasement or war.

In the 1930s Europe chose appeasement. Today Spain has done so again. Europe may follow....

Today there is no doubting the intentions of Arab-Islamic radicalism. It is not this grievance or that (U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia). It is not this territory or that (Palestine, Andalusia). The intention, endlessly repeated, is the establishment of a primitive, messianic caliphate -- redeeming Islam and dominating the world. They have seen the future: Taliban Afghanistan, writ large.

After a terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want -- a socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government.

The devil as a person has staged a comeback in Madrid, European and American theologians ruminated Friday, the day after terrorist attacks on trains killed at least 198 and injured more than 1,400 in the Spanish capital....

A personal devil does not fit in with the postmodern religion worshiping a cuddly God. This God, one assumes, would be too weak to defeat the personal Satan, who has mutated from The Evil One (he) in the original teachings of the Church to The Evil (it) in contemporary homiletics.

About an hour into the tour, our group was standing around our leader outside of the gems and minerals display room. Before we went in, he took out his Bible and read from Revelation 21 so we could identify the gems that are in heaven.

After reading a few verses, a Smithsonian guard came up to him, pulled him aside, and told him he was not allowed to read Scripture. After pursuing it further, the group leader was told by the lieutenant of the Smithsonian police that "some people don’t agree with what you're doing." He was told that he can lead tours and talk about minerals and human evolution, but if the group wanted to read the Bible or pray, we needed to go outside on the Mall and do it, because we were not allowed to do that in the building.

The Smithsonian Institution is funded in part by the government. I find it troubling that a group of citizens was told they could not read the Scriptures or even pray inside this public building. Is this the country that was founded on religious freedom over 225 years ago? Is this the land of the free? Is this my America?

A cadre of revisionists now seeks to redefine evangelical theology through a theological "megashift" that looks remarkably like the liberal theology evangelicals once rejected. Central doctrines such as Christ's substitutionary atonement, verbal inspiration, the exclusivity of the Gospel, the reality of hell, and justification by faith alone are rejected in favor of a new evangelical paradigm.

The Reformation foundations of the evangelical tradition are to be replaced with a new doctrinal platform complete with a wrathless deity and an unnecessary cross. This is no minor alteration.

Advocates of this "megashift" declare that the revolution is inevitable as younger evangelicals reject the old doctrines. The shift may be hidden by the continued use of traditional language, but the older words have been redefined. As one leading proponent of this new evangelical theology bragged, younger evangelicals already think this way, so the resistors will simply be replaced with the revisionists.

In a nutshell, that's the major reason for the great divide within America and between America and much of Europe. The majority of people use their heart -- stirred by their eyes -- to determine what is right and wrong. A minority uses their mind and/or the Bible to make that determination.

The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo.

With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.

You see, unlike many, I'm willing to believe that certain foreign leaders have told Kerry "we need to get Bush out of there." I don't think he's lying about that because appeasers everywhere, foreign and domestic, support Kerry.

When it comes to the War on Terror, among other related things, there are essentially two different perspectives. One is held by those who believe that international aggressors, whether they be communists or al-Qaida, can be reasoned with, coddled, humored or appeased. Or they aren't that great of a threat in the first place. The other perspective is held by those who have the common sense to know better.

Senator Orrin Hatch may soon propose a constitutional amendment that would permit a state-by-state patchwork definition of marriage. Some see this proposal as an embodiment of federalist principles; it is not. The notion that federalism permits or demands a hodgepodge definition of marriage fundamentally misunderstands the family's place in the structure of American democracy. This nation must have -- and will have -- a uniform definition of marriage.

It is true that, in our federal system, the states have a responsibility to regulate marriage. In accordance with the principles of federalism, the states can and should be permitted to regulate such matters as degree of consanguinity, age of consent, and the rules of divorce. Yet it is a categorical error to subject the essential definition of marriage to state regulation. The Founders did not understand either federalism or the family in this way. The Founders took the fundamental meaning of marriage for granted.

I'm all for the Federal Marriage Amendment, but we shouldn't pretend that even it is likely to prevent some pretty sobering changes in our culture down the road a bit. For the problem isn't so much that we have the wrong views on homosexual marriage; the problem is that, as a society, we have the wrong views about where we get our views. So, only a tiny minority in our society today really has any well-defined, specific idea why they're against homosexual marriage. And when the shallow thoughts and trivial convictions of the other folks pass away -- even many who say they oppose homosexual marriage -- they'll give way all too easily to a totally alien mindset.

That alien mindset is what we should really be worried about. And it is much closer than we tend to think.

This mindset is a point of view that does not simply seek permission to engage in certain kinds of behavior. It seeks instead to ensure that everyone else in society also engages in that same behavior, or at least gives it tacit approval.

Under the influence of Christianity and Western legal thought, expressed in church canon law and English common law, marriage for much of Western history was conceived in a covenantal model....In practice this meant that your marriage was not just about you. It was about a complex network of relationships that had an impact on the community. Society supported marriage, marriage supported society. Moreover, as anyone who has been married beyond the honeymoon stage knows, sometimes the institution carries you. You don't always feel totally "in love" with your spouse. There are some days and seasons you would take a flier, but the institution sustains you, and by and large we are better for it. If you think feeling totally in love is what marriage is about, yours will be a short-term venture.

And, in fact, that is increasingly what marriage has become in modern, Western society. The covenantal understanding of marriage has been replaced by the choice model and understanding of marriage. In the choice model marriage is not an institution with rights and responsibilities, it is simply a contract between autonomous individuals for the purpose of maximizing personal fulfillment, sexual and otherwise.

If it's merely a private arrangement between two people for their personal fulfillment, then there is really no reason for either church or state to be involved or even to call it marriage. Call it "Hollywood" or "fun and games" or "serial monogamy." But if we're going to call it "marriage," let it count for something, something big and bold, something like promises to keep. In my experience, many people who are gay or lesbian understand and live out the deeper meaning of such promises.

America went to the movies this month. Some came away with an Aristotelian catharsis, and others came away with true repentance. Some saw Jesus, while others, like the dwarfs in C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle, swore there was nothing there at all. And the responses to the movie were uncannily the movie playing itself out, with the divisions between men depicted in the film mirrored in the divisions between men in theaters and the press. For Jesus will always do that: "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division" (Luke 12:51).

It is really quite nervy to argue that a federal law ought to be overturned by the courts but decline to provide evidence to support the claim. The plaintiffs obviously know that the privacy claim is bogus. No names, addresses or any other identifying information will be attached to the medical records. It will simply state that Patient X was 20 years old, and was 23 weeks pregnant. Relevant aspects of her health profile will be included, like blood pressure, previous C-sections and other pieces of history. But unless the Department of Justice has at least those facts, it cannot possibly determine how to frame its response to this evidence.

It isn't really surprising that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are attempting to hide the facts. They've been doing so ever since the existence of the procedure became known. They first claimed that no such procedure existed. When that collapsed, they argued that the fetus was killed by the anesthesia administered to the mother. When anesthesiologists protested, they admitted that this wasn't true -- but that the procedure was so rarely performed it wasn't worth talking about. And when that lie was exposed, they urged that it was only done to save the life of the mother or in cases of severe fetal deformity. None of those statements was true.

Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, has been toying with the idea of introducing an alternative to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Instead of banning same-sex marriage altogether, his amendment would leave that question, and questions about quasi-marital benefits for same-sex couples, to state legislatures. Until this point, the Hatch amendment has read, "Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman." If Hatch moves ahead with it, the words "and its benefits" will probably be added after "civil marriage" in the first sentence, to ensure that civil unions as well as same-sex marriage is a matter left to the state legislatures.

While there is certainly a great deal to be said about homosexual marriage, I have come to believe that this issue is merely an epiphenomenon, the visible manifestation of some deeper trend. To be precise, I think that what is under way here is a program to purge the very notion of sex [ie male and female] from all our laws. This is not just a campaign to permit men to marry men, and women women; it is a campaign for the abolition of sex. Nor is it the homosexualists who are in the vanguard here, but the transsexualists -- persons who wish to be not the sex Nature, in forming their bodies, intended them to be, but the other one.

Those trying to derail this bill, or at least gut it, understand what's going on here. And so do those proposing it. Every such proposal is one more flank attack on the central proposition underlying the legalization of abortion: that the unborn have no claim on life that the state need respect.

Protect the unborn victims of assault and murder, and who knows where it might end?

Every time abortion is challenged, even tangentially, consciences stir. Just as, in antebellum America, the constant agitation of the slavery question exposed the immorality of slavery itself.

The Peculiar Institution was threatened even when the abolitionists of the time were seeking only to limit it -- in the territories, in interstate commerce, in the nation's capital -- rather than outlaw it altogether.

Q. Do you support a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage?

A. I certainly understand that something needs to be done to stop mayors and judges and others who are disregarding the law. But I think the procedure to correct these problems lies within the Constitution itself, which doesn't need to be amended.

You cannot correct every moral deficit created by the courts by constitutional amendment. If we make a constitutional amendment that says marriage is between a man and a woman, what stops a court from saying that means a man can marry his sister, thereby making incest legal? The problem is the courts.

Those who make a public pledge to abstain until marriage delay sex, have fewer sex partners and get married earlier, according to the data, gathered from adolescents ages 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later. But the two groups' STD rates were statistically similar.

The problem, the study found, is that those virginity "pledgers" are much less likely to use condoms.

Aside from Planned Parenthood and NOW, it is endorsed by such mainstream "pro-choice" groups as National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The abortionist appreciation "holiday," according to the web site of the umbrella group that founded it, Refuse and Resist, entails such as activities as "local appreciation day events," and asking people to use their "imagination, creativity and dedication to help create a climate" where abortionists "can hold their heads high."

It stands to reason in my mind that it is not a matter of if, but a matter of how soon the haters act on their intentions. It is plainly obvious to me that the contempt for all things God centered "must needs be." Evil like mold and mildew needs a certain climate -- atmosphere if you will -- in order to exist. Nor does evil approve of limits or restraint. It is precisely for these reasons that all things of God must be reduced to secularisms or eliminated. Because it is then and only then that man will be able to act upon his most baneful desires.

It happened when God was removed from schools, it happened when God was removed from the sanctity of life. It will happen if we permit the continued attacks on our holy days. While the historical "Truth" of Christmas and Easter cannot be changed, it won't have to be if mankind ceases to remember it.

Dr Stephen Unwin has used a 200-year-old formula to calculate the probability of the existence of an omnipotent being. Bayes' Theory is usually used to work out the likelihood of events, such as nuclear power failure, by balancing the various factors that could affect a situation.

The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing, and then factors in the evidence both for and against the notion of a higher being.

If through civil unions (as endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry) gay couples can obtain the benefits of marriage, what difference does the word marriage make?

Quite a bit, say a number of Christian leaders who support civil unions but oppose same-sex marriage. They see civil unions as a means of economic justice -- but not just for homosexuals. In fact, they would rather see such legislation avoid mention of sexuality altogether.

"It may well be that for the sake of public justice we need to recognize different kinds of households, but I would never start that by primary reference to so-called gay households." said Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, professor of psychology and philosophy at Eastern University. "[Civil unions] could include things like single people looking after aging parents. It could include, as in my own family, two bachelor brothers and a sister who ran a farm their whole life." Defined this way, she says, civil unions would actually preserve the uniqueness of marriage.

Andrew, I know, agrees with me that civil unions for heterosexuals would be catastrophic. These kinds of "marriage lite" arrangements exist in France, Canada, and other countries. They encourage young people to make a very bad choice: to enter into pseudo-marital relationships that lack the stability and security of real marriage. In Canada, the case I know best, the average non-marital cohabitation lasts only five years.

While these arrangements tend to be short, they last long enough to produce children -- children who almost certainly will grow up without a father, with all the risks that follow from that. So the damage done by civil unions is not confined to the unwise young people who enter into them. The real price is paid by their children.

Does sexual attraction always serve to bring a couple together so that, as they come to know each other, they eventually "fall in love"? Lewis believes that more often they fall in love first and then find themselves sexually attracted. "There may be those who have first felt mere sexual appetite for a woman and then gone on at a later stage to 'fall in love with her.' but I doubt if this is at all common," Lewis writes in his Four Loves. "Very often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved -- a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality. A man in this state hasn't leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person." Lewis states that a man in love wants "not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give." Lewis sums up with: "Sexual desire...wants it, the thing in itself; Eros [being in love] wants the Beloved."

Lawmakers in Wisconsin and Kansas pushed ahead Friday on efforts to amend their states' constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, two days after Utah's Legislature agreed to put the question to voters.