The colloquial meaning of the word was taken for granted. To define marriage legally would have been redundant since the word itself was defined as the union of a man and a woman.

If one were to trace the origin of marriage in modern societies, one would probably come up with some folk theory of natural law. The human race depends for its maintenance on the union between the male and female of the species, and societies have an interest in guarding and regulating that union.

Of course, this was back in the days when the function of human sexual union was understood to include the perpetuity of the race, as it does in all species. In Jewish and Christian societies the institution around which procreation was organized and nurtured was called marriage. Hence marriage between a man and a woman, even in societies that can scarcely remember (or are loath to recall) their Judeo-Christian pedigree, is taken for granted as normal and natural. Of course, that was all B.P. -- Before the Pill.

After the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s human procreation was no longer seen as the main function of human sexuality. In the new statist utopia the birth and nurture of children as the outcome of normal sexual contact have been relegated to a footnote, like a Surgeon General's warning on a box of condoms.

The subsequent pandemic of unwanted pregnancies in Western countries is a testament to the "unnaturalness" of childbearing in the minds of many "normal" people today. Abortions in the tens of millions bear witness to society's savage warfare against nature with her oppressive restrictions against what has become America's most fundamental civil right.

The most recent American revision of The Book of Common Prayer has kept pace with the displacement of procreation as "normal" by placing it last in God's order in his institution of holy matrimony, and there with the disclaimer "when it is God's will", as if childbirth were something of which even God needed to be reminded or perhaps convinced.

This is in keeping with the post-war consensus of God as chaplain to a generation of narcissists in the rapidly graying mainline churches. Conservative groups, like the movers of Amendment 2, seek to resist the desacralizing of nature by placing the traditional family under the sanction of law, but it may be too little too late. And there is a terrible irony in appealing to a "higher" court in this matter.

In calling on the state to define the nature of marriage, proponents of the amendment acknowledge the ultimate authority of a human court in place of the providential rule of Nature. More recently other domestic arrangements have become socially acceptable and are increasingly recognized as normal.

Nontraditional couples, including same sex couples, now seek access to the legal benefits enjoyed by married couples, such as health benefits, property rights, and the like. But this is just the surface issue. What sexual innovators are looking for is divine legitimacy.

The state, in the exalted place once occupied by Nature's God, now defines the meaning of nature, not to mention that of societal norms.

The State giveth, and the State taketh away. Besides that, the divine State can overrule the deposed God of the Judeo-Christian heretics. So we end up not only with new civil rights guaranteed under the constitution, but a revelation from a new and better Sinai.

The movement in Florida and other states seeks to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage in the state constitution. Gay rights and other activist groups oppose the amendment with the usual argument (which is no argument) -- simply to equate the traditional view with bigotry.

The next step is part of a familiar strategy -- to call on the state to criminalize the historic teaching as "hate", the counterpart to heresy in today's Inquisition. Amendment 2 may pass in Florida. If it doesn't pass there, it probably will somewhere else. But even passing such an amendment is a kind of defeat.

The old God is appealing to the new for a ruling. If it is granted, it will only be temporary. No god worth his salt can abide second place in the heart of a suppliant. Not for long.

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.