. . . someone acting out a denial of their own gender. . . ."

No, that's not the case with homosexuals, either gay men or Lesbian women. It is not a matter of "denying" their gender.

You have a very limited view of what a marriage is or should be, GfS. People marry for all kinds of reasons:   for the most part, couples don't get married just because they want to produce offspring. In fact, most people don't get married primarily because they want to have children. Sometimes children are planned, but more often than not, children happen. And sometimes inconveniently as far as the couple is concerned.

There are all kinds of reasons people get married, and those reasons depend on the wants and needs of the two individuals in the relationship and how those wants and needs interact. Although it may look like it to the non-discerning—most marriages look very much alike from the outside—no two marriages come out of the same cookie-cutter.

When Barbara and I got married, she was forty and I was forty-six. We talked about the possibility of children and then decided, for several reasons, not to have any. So there goes what some folks (apparently you as well) seem to regard as the only reason for getting married.

So why did we get married? Just for readily available sex? No. Barbara was and still is a very attractive woman, and I have had sufficient indications that I am not exactly unattractive to women ("stud muffin," I believe is the expression). We could have had about all the sex we want without getting married. No. We got married because of mutual attraction, yes, but also because of shared values and interests, and mutual admiration and respect. We are both complete individuals, capably of living perfectly contented solitary lives. We each with our own careers. We enjoy our individual activities and pursuits and we enjoy the many things we do together. Our marriage is a matter of synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We had our thirty-first anniversary this past December. Go ahead, do the math. Neither of us is a kid, and we've both seen a bit of the world.

In our wide circle of friends and acquaintances, we know a number of same-sex couples—couples who live together and are "out of the closet." One of these couples often joins us in our holiday get-togethers and dinners, and the other folks we celebrate with consider them to be just another couple.

We have civilized friends.

And I have described another same-sex couple above (CLICKY) who have adopted two children, pointing out that these two boys are certainly going to have a better life being raised by "Papa" and "Daddy" than they would have had if left where they were.

By the way, were you aware that the population pressure on Bali is so heavy that the government is encouraging same-sex relationships in hopes of cutting down their local population explosion? It isn't working, because people are simply not going to get into a same-sex relationship unless they are predisposed to do so!

No. All of the arguments advanced to support laws like Proposition 8, or misguided efforts to amend the Constitution (thereby displaying abysmal ignorance of what the Constitution is all about) in an effort to rigidly define "marriage" in a manner that limits the civil rights of a specific group of people fail on the grounds of ethics, morality, Constitutionality, and just plain good sense.

Don Firth