How to reconcile the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans with the seemingly hardening opposition to gay marriage? It certainly suggests that homophobia is only part of the explanation for the widespread resistance to same-sex marriage. A lot of the resistance is less about sexual orientation than about sex difference. In other words, it's not about the difference between gay and straight; it's about the difference between male and female. By this logic, conventional marriage doesn't exclude gay couples from a special status reserved for straights; it excludes women from a special status reserved for men -- that of husband -- and excludes men from a status reserved for women -- that of wife.

Does this sound purely semantic? It's not. When San Francisco undertook its short-lived experiment with same-sex marriage, it confronted marriage certificate forms with blanks for the names of the "bride" and "groom." The city hastily rewrote them to read "first applicant" and "second applicant." And this is telling. Many people get married because they want the established sex roles the institution provides: a blushing, beautiful, white veil and miles-of-lace bride set off against her dashing, handsome, chivalrous groom. Same-sex marriage seems to undermine these very sex-specific statuses, leaving everyone a sex-neutral "applicant." Sure, we could say same-sex marriages involve two brides or two grooms, but something really is lost in this translation: At that point the terms do not describe distinctively gendered roles but are merely gendered descriptions of the same role. We could just as well say "male applicant" and "female applicant." This might explain why so many straight people think same-sex marriage will change the nature of marriage for them.

The reason ordinary, otherwise apolitical Israelis supported Gaza disengagement last year had nothing to do with Oslo-era delusions that peace was possible. Israelis simply want an end to the prolonged "negotiations" which never really lead anywhere. Unilateral disengagement was sold and supported on the idea that there was no partner with whom to negotiate, so Israel would just pull out to end the headache once and for all. It offered at least the hint of an opportunity for "normalcy."

Now the body politic appears poised to swing in the other direction, meaning no more appetite for unilateral concessions. Which, were that to happen, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would find the central -- perhaps only -- platform from his campaign left in tatters. Shortly after Olmert dropped "acting" from his title, the new political buzzword became "convergence," which was in essence a proposed disengagement from most of the West Bank. As a personal friend of Olmert's conceded to me today, "That's dead for now, at least for this term."

As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church. It's a Church of What's Happening Now, conferring a feel-good imprimatur on whatever the liberal elements of secular society deem permissible or politically correct.

You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God's name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ's divinity, to address her priests.