The second assumption forgets the religious grounding for some of our most hallowed proclamations of human rights. The Declaration of Independence declares that "all men are created equal" because "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." In his second inaugural address Abraham Lincoln said "American slavery is one of those offenses which . . . God now wills to remove."

It is arguable that the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century and civil rights movement of the twentieth might never have succeeded without their explicit claims to transcendence in the public square. A naked public square that censors religious speech creates a vacuum into which demons come rushing, happy to insist that might makes right. The equality on which the Times editors triumphantly insist is a creation of religious vision. Now they say that the vision that enabled them to see must no longer influence public vision.

The Times editors assume everyone should have a right to marriage. But there are certain rights with important restrictions, such as the rights to marry, attend a selective college, or serve in the military. For example, we already recognize that not everyone has the right to enlist in the army, but that one must be of the proper age, physical condition, citizenship, and philosophy-anarchists and pacifists need not apply. We also agree that certain persons do not have the right to marriage-children, multiple partners, family members, and those already married. Marriage is a social institution whose entry is properly restricted. Social institutions do not carry the right of universal access.

Our newspaper's editors also wrongly assume that marriage can be turned inside out and still retain the title "marriage." After all, it is often said, marriage has continuously evolved through the centuries, so gay marriage would be just another change in an ever-changing definition of marriage.

But while marriage laws and customs have evolved, especially with respect to the status of women, a remarkable core of continuity has held in every time and place that only sexual opposites are naturally capable of marrying, since the marital union is founded on their sexual complementarity and exists (primarily) for the procreation of children.. One can say all she wants that gay "marriage" is the same thing that history has blessed, but she will find history and culture looking on in befuddled dismay.

The Times editors omit the question which is usually ignored in discussions of gay marriage-What about the children? France's "Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children " (2006) recommended denying legalization of same-sex marriage, citing concerns about the identity and development of children when the law creates a "fictitious filiation" or situation in which there are "two fathers or two mothers-which is biologically neither real nor plausible."

Not that biology is everything--some biological parents are bad parents and many adoptive parents are wonderful. But, as the New York Times has reported, "From a child's point of view, according to a growing body of social science research, the most supportive household is one with two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

One reason for this is that, as research has shown, children grow best with both a father and a mother, since each sex contributes unique skills to parenting. Same-sex marriage will undermine this principle and probably increase the number of children who do not enjoy this gender complementarity in the home.

Will the Times editors write to protect children against polygamists and polyamorists (multiple spouses), whose marriages will inevitably be legalized by a state that legalizes gay marriage?

---Dr. Gerald McDermott lives in Salem. He is the Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College and the author of eleven books, his web page is:
http://roanoke.edu/Academics/Academic_Departments/Religion_and_Philosophy/Faculty/Dr_McDermott.htm