Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart! But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, My steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, and their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; the garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness; the imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; they speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue parades through the earth. Therefore his people return to this place, and waters of abundance are drunk by them. They say, 'How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?'...

Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.

On Mother's Day, May 9, the Sunday New York Times ran a long piece -- beginning on the front page and continuing on pages 9 and 10 -- on the background of the Abu Ghraib abuses. It was peppered with the names of military women....In a sign of how we've come to take the gender integration of the armed services for granted, the article did not draw attention to the high rank of the first two women. Nor did it take note of what would once have been thought a rarity: Women soldiers directing or participating in the sadistic treatment of male prisoners....

The restraints that shame once placed on what men and women would do in front of each other were part of the code of the "gentleman" and the "lady." They once had a great deal more to do with the social understanding of womanhood than anything you could buy. Possibly people of Pfc. Lynndie England's age believe that this code was mainly about stereotypes of female frailty and male strength. But it was much more about the remarkable way that men and women can -- or, at one time, could -- encourage kind and decent actions in one another by adhering to a code of conduct. And even in the absence of kindness and decency, traditional ideas of shame would have prevented certain kinds of abuse. At one time, a woman would have told the men of Abu Ghraib that she would have no part in stripping and shaming Iraqi prisoners. At one time a man would not have let a woman see him strip other men. He would at least have done it outside her view. And if women were ever-present in the environment, he wouldn't have committed those particular deeds at all.

Liberals oppose dodge-ball, they tell us, because it isolates and terrorizes the weak. Of course, they have the right to kill children still in the womb who have no way of protecting themselves.

The "its not fair crowd" always yells and screams about dodge-ball because not everybody wins. This is the purpose of games right? Not to push yourself to be more alert, active, hard working and achieve success, but rather it should always be about giving "every kid a trophy"..."Why can't we all be winners?"

The communist left wants to make a big deal about how in dodge-ball one team might hoard all the resources. I mean if a kid is fast enough, he may be able to, once the whistle is blown, sprint to mid-court and knock all the balls back in the direction of his teammates so they have all the "weapons" and the other team has none. I don't know if that's a military strategy or an economic one -- though it sure sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan to me -- and we all know how insulting that is.

"Pro family' groups have given it their best shot, but this debate is over. They would do better to spend their energy and resources building up their side of the cultural divide and demonstrating how their own precepts are supposed to work. Divorce remains a great threat to family stability, and there are far more heterosexuals divorcing and cohabiting than homosexuals wishing to 'marry.' If conservative religious people wish to exert maximum influence on culture, they will redirect their attention to repairing their own cracked foundation. An improved heterosexual family structure will do more for those families and the greater good than attempts to halt the inevitable. A topical solution does not cure a skin disease whose source is far deeper.

The idea that marriage is a contract has undermined more heterosexual marriages than anything, with the possible exception of adultery. The problem with sliding into the contractual view of marriage is that it shifts the focus from a generous sharing of the self to a narrow and stingy view of rights and obligations. A contract is a carefully orchestrated exchange of promises, spelling out specific duties for a specified length of time. The parties calculate in advance. They haggle over the terms of their cooperation to ensure that no one is cheated. When the purposes of the contract have been fulfilled, it ends.

By contrast, the sexual act involves the complete sharing of one's body with another person. I entrust myself to my spouse. He entrusts himself to me. This is not a carefully orchestrated exchange of promises; this is an act of self-giving abandon.

It is said that to win a battle you must be the one to choose the battleground. Since the Abu Ghraib abuses were revealed, the battleground has been chosen by those who would blur the lines between terrorists and those fighting against them. The Bush administration has contributed to the confusion with its ambiguous 'war on terror.' You cannot fight a word. You need targets, you need to know what you are fighting for and against. Most importantly you must have beliefs that enable you to distinguish friend from foe.

While al Qaeda may not have a headquarters to bomb, there is no shortage of visible adversaries. What is required is to name them and to take action against them. We must also drag into the light those leaders and media who fail to condemn acts of terror. It is not only Al Jazeera talking about 'insurgents' in Iraq, it is CNN. Many in Europe and even some in the U.S. are trying to differentiate 'legitimate' terrorism from 'bad' terrorism. Those who intentionally kill innocent civilians are terrorists, as are their sponsors. No political agenda should be allowed to advance through terrorist activity. We need to identify our enemy, not play with words."

The networks on Monday night approached the creation, by four of seven members of the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, of a right to same-sex marriage, as a civil rights triumph without ever telling viewers about how the new law was imposed by judicial fiat which did not allow time for a legislative process to codify the majority view. All three broadcast networks led with same-sex marriage. ABC's Peter Jennings explicitly equated same-sex marriage rights with the Brown v Board of Education decision against unequal treatment of the races: "Two of our main stories tonight are about the struggle for rights and inclusion -- one of them in the 20th century, the other right now in the 21st."

Anthropologists tell us two of the biggest indicators of a doomed civilization are the practice of infanticide and human sacrifice. In other words, cultures and species that kill their own young do not survive. If history really does repeat itself, then American society may also be doomed to extinction.

Is America sacrificing its soul, and its young, on the altar of convenience? Do we bow down to the corrupt pagan god of moral expediency? Is anything really wrong anymore or only those things that disrupt our lives and our plans for ourselves?

Despite what his critics say, LaHaye considers it a message of comfort and hope, and its roots are as much personal as Biblical -- though that's a distinction LaHaye probably wouldn't make...."One of my driving passions has been to help laypeople understand that the word of God means what it says and says what it means."

End-of-timers, millenarians and fundamentalists envision a bleak and bloody future for humanity. Deeming a global catastrophe inevitable for their rapture and salvation, they work to bring it about. Nowadays they have the ears and hearts of a powerful elite in the world's formidable superpower. The sooner we perceive their menace, the better we can expose and isolate them among a majority of American Christians, who peacefully adhere to their faith. What Bush wisely said of Islam is also true of the faith he professes: Christianity is a religion of peace.

Supporting an amendment to the Constitution to exclude a whole group of people from the rights and benefits of marriage is overreaching on a scale that Bush could regret. He dithered about it for weeks, hoping to avoid taking a definitive position. Polls show that a majority of the country opposes gay marriage, but a majority of voters also opposes amending the Constitution. A parade of influential social conservatives warned the White House that Bush couldn't stay on the sidelines. "It reminds me of his father's reelection campaign, when the senior Bush didn't have a strong hold on the conservative base and had to take positions he was uncomfortable with, culminating in the [1992] Houston convention," recalls an aide to a senior Senate Republican. "If you're a Republican, the fact he had to do it is discouraging."

This is the first time a proposed constitutional amendment seeks to exclude a group of people from the rights and benefits of a societal arrangement called marriage. It puts Bush on the side of intolerance -- a dangerous place to be for a man who doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of his father.

We always come back to that strong horse/weak horse thing. But the point to remember is that Osama bin Laden talked about who was seen as the strong horse: It's a perception issue. America may be, technically, the strong horse but, thanks to its press and its political class, the administration is showing dangerous signs of climbing into the rear end of the weak-horse burlesque suit. If America retreats into its own fatalistic apathy, there will be many more Nick Bergs in the years ahead.

A hit unscripted series in the United Kingdom, "Wife Swap," is making its way to the United States.

The title, which conjures up visions of a 1970s swingers party, is racier than the concept: Two married women switch places with one another for 10 days, living with the other's family and taking on the other woman's household duties. At the end of the 10 days, the families get together to discuss what they experienced.

Our war against Iraq is part of our larger war on terrorism. Some would have us believe that Iraq represented no threat to the United States either through WMD or as a launching-pad for terrorists. They point to the insurgency there now as proof that we stirred up a hornet's nest by invading Iraq.

I think it proves just the opposite: that international and local terrorists consider Iraq indispensable turf in the war on terror. As the deadline for the new government grows near, the level of violence intensifies, which is just further confirmation that the enemy badly wants us -- and the Iraqi people -- to fail.

Two separate discoveries of chemical weapons, possibly among the weapons of mass destruction Saddam hid from inspectors, were reported today in Iraq by U.S. officials.

What will all this mean for Massachusetts, for the nation, and for marriage? The media will show the nation a mass of smiling couples today -- basking in their newly-declared 'right' to marry. Commentators will describe this historic day as a monument on the road to the full liberation of homosexuals, the complete normalization of homosexuality, and the total flexibility of marriage. Where is the harm?, they will ask.

The harm is first to the institution of marriage itself. Today, the State of Massachusetts joins the Netherlands, Belgium, and three provinces of Canada as the only major jurisdictions where homosexual couples can marry. If this decision stands, marriage will never be the same again. Humanity's most venerable and cherished institution has been redefined by a secular elite in the name of liberation -- and it will inevitably be destroyed in the process.

The Massachusetts court ruled that marriage should be seen as a basically secular institution, and thus is open to secular reinterpretation and redefinition. But this logic ignores the fact that church and state have shared a common understanding of marriage at the basic level -- that it is the union of a man and a woman. That stands no more. From this point onward, the believing church must know that its definition of marriage is not shared by the state. This will lead to truly tragic levels of confusion -- and perhaps even to coercion.

Yarbrough, a part-time bartender who plans to wear leather pants, tuxedo shirt, and leather vest during the half-hour ceremony, has gotten hitched to Rogahn, a retired school superintendent, first in a civil commitment in Minnesota, then in Canada, and now in Massachusetts, the first U.S. state to recognize gay marriage.

But he says the concept of forever is "overrated'' and that he, as a bisexual, and Rogahn, who is gay, have chosen to enjoy an open marriage. "I think it's possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner, not in the polygamist sense,'' he said. "In our case, it is, we have, an open marriage.''

The year-and-a-half delay between action in Afghanistan and Iraq mobilized the Arabs and the international left, weakened the connection with September 11, and prompted allies who would have been with us to fall away. The delay was especially unconscionable because it was due not merely to normal difficulties but to the aforementioned military insufficiencies and to indecision masquerading as circumspection. Once the Army and Marines were rolling, their supply lines were left deliberately unprotected, and are vulnerable to this day. Why? Why do the generals, in patently identifiable top-down-speak, repeatedly state that they need nothing more than the small number of troops (for occupying such a large country) that they are assigned? Why do they and the administration steadfastly hold this line even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy?

From the beginning, the scale of the war was based on the fundamental strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the imagination of the Arab World, which, if sufficiently stunned, would tip itself back into the heretofore easily induced fatalism that makes it hesitate to war against the West. After the true shock and awe of a campaign of massive surplus, as in the Gulf War, no regime would have risked its survival by failing to go after the terrorists within its purview. But a campaign of bare sufficiency, that had trouble punching through even ragtag irregulars, taught the Arabs that we could be effectively opposed.

Today is the day that gay citizens in this country cross a milestone of equality. Gay couples will be married in Massachusetts -- their love and commitment and responsibility fully cherished for the first time by the society they belong to. It is also, amazingly enough, the day of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in schools across America. We should be wary of facile comparisons. The long march of African-Americans to civil equality was and is deeply different from the experience and legacy of gay Americans. But in one respect, the date is fitting, for both Brown and this new day revolve around a single, simple and yet deeply elusive idea: integration.

By order of its supreme court, Massachusetts will start giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples on May 17. We are not sure what will then happen. Will a public opposed to same-sex marriage be outraged enough to force corrective action? Or will it quickly grow used to the idea? How long will it take for other state courts to import Massachusetts marriages to their jurisdictions? Our hope is that the public reaction to Massachusetts will force the passage of a constitutional amendment blocking the courts from imposing same-sex marriage or civil unions. As we wait to see what happens, it may be a good time to restate our reasons for supporting an amendment....

If same-sex marriage were triumphing as a result of popular support, it would be pointless to try to stop it by constitutional amendment. But that is not what is happening. Judges are imposing it on the theory that constitutional guarantees of equality and due process entail it. But the law discriminates against no person by maintaining marriage as what it is. The law makes no inquiries into sexual desire: A gay man and a lesbian can get married in any state, if they so choose. The question here is one of definition, not eligibility.