The raising of children requires stability and known, reliable parent figures. This can be achieved perfectly well by two married women, two married men, or a married man and woman.

The staid and quaint image you found your essay on is nice, but is not accurate. The conditions supporting ot have changed, and one of the major changes is the degree of recognition of homosexuality as a natural condition which is not diabolical, psychotic, or destructive in itself, and is certainly not deliberate.

Furthermore the fundamental question rsaised here is not the kind of tradition in which marriage occurs. It is the legal and civil status. The furbelows of additional significance can be all in the hands of the churches who preempted it from free people so many centuries ago. But once the law creates a civil status called "married", then (in this country) that legal status must be evenly available without the bias and prejudice which you and Ake articulate. That is the only central argument on which this thread is based.

Invoking horrorsahow visions about homosexuality is of no more relevance than your velvet-lined needle-work pictures of the sanctimony of past religious ceremonies and their meanings.

In the matter of law, equality must govern.


A