As a happily married heterosexual father of four daughters and grandfather of three sons...I say Hip Hip Hooray for my home state of California.! I have never in my life been able to understand why some people are so freaked out by gay rights. I certainly hope that enough decent folks come out to vote in November to ratify the Courts decision!

I live in San Francisco, and the spark of love and happiness is everywhere! A long fought battle has finally paid off. Huge props need to go to those couples who headed up the lawsuit.

Although this is now among the things that make CA great, I worry. In a state that elected the governator (please note, he didn't win SF), I fear the wrath of the conservative south (and I mean southern California). They scare me.

Come on Californians!!!! Don't let us down now.

I support gay marriage! However, I think opponents have a valid point when they say that the court over-stepped its authority when it ignored the votes of the people of CA. What other votes will the court over rule in the future. It worries me that whenever a certain "interest group" doesn't agree with the majority of their fellow citizens that they can just go to the courts and get it over ruled. Yes, a simplification for sure, but think about it...

If you assume that gay married couples will have the same divorce rate as straight married couples (and there's no reason to think otherwise) then their children will potentially have 4 mothers or 4 fathers if they divorce. And of course, if they marry and divorce again, their children will have 8 mothers and 8 fathers. Raising kids in today's society is hard enough, why complicate their lives even more!

Americans seem mesmerized by the word "change." And, by golly, they
sure got it from the California Supreme Court. It is
difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining
marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex.

Nothing imaginable -- leftward or rightward -- would constitute as
radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining
of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition,
not government taking over all health care, not changing all public
education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations,
not rescinding the income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax.
Nothing.

Unless California voters amend the California Constitution or Congress
amends the U.S. Constitution, four justices of the California Supreme
Court will have changed American society more than any four
individuals since Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison.

And what is particularly amazing is that virtually none of those who
support this decision -- let alone the four compassionate justices --
acknowledge this. The mantra of the supporters of this sea change in
society is that it's no big deal. Hey, it doesn't affect any
heterosexuals' marriage, so what's the problem?

This lack of acknowledgment -- or even awareness -- of how society-
changing is this redefinition of marriage is one reason the decision
was made. To the four compassionate ones -- and their millions of
compassionate supporters -- allowing same-sex marriage is nothing more
than what courts did to end legal bans on interracial marriage. The
justices and their supporters know not what they did. They think that
all they did was extend a "right" that had been unfairly denied to
gays.

Another reason for this decision is arrogance. First, the arrogance of
four individuals to impose their understanding of what is right and
wrong on the rest of society. And second is the arrogance of the four
compassionate ones in assuming that all thinkers, theologians,
philosophers, religions and moral systems in history were wrong, while
they and their supporters have seen a moral light never seen before.
Not a single religion or moral philosophical system -- East or West --
since antiquity ever defined marriage as between members of the same
sex.

That is one reason the argument that this decision is the same as
courts undoing legal bans on marriages between races is false. No
major religion -- not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam, not
Buddhism -- ever banned interracial marriage. Some religions have
banned marriages with members of other religions. But since these
religions allowed anyone of any race to convert, i.e., become a member
of that religion, the race or ethnicity of individuals never mattered
with regard to marriage. American bans on interracial marriages were
not supported by any major religious or moral system; those bans were
immoral aberrations, no matter how many religious individuals may have
supported them. Justices who overthrew bans on interracial marriages,
therefore, had virtually every moral and religious value system since
ancient times on their side. But justices who overthrow the ban on
same-sex marriage have nothing other their hubris and their notions of
compassion on their side.

Since the secular age began, the notion that one should look to
religion -- or to any past wisdom -- for one's values has died. Thus,
the modern attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian value system as the
basis of America's values, and to disparage the Founders as
essentially morally flawed individuals (They allowed slavery, didn't
they?). The modern secular liberal knows that he is not only morally
superior to conservatives; he is morally superior to virtually
everyone who ever lived before him.

Which leads to a third reason such a sea change could be so cavalierly
imposed by four individuals -- the modern supplanting of wisdom with
compassion as the supreme guide in forming society's values and laws.
Just as for religious fundamentalists, "the Bible says" ends
discussion, for liberal fundamentalists, "compassion says" ends
discussion.

If this verdict stands, society as we have known it will change. The
California Supreme Court and its millions of supporters are playing
with fire. And it will eventually burn future generations in ways we
can only begin to imagine.

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged
from imagining one day marrying their prince charming -- to do so
would be declared "heterosexist," morally equivalent to racist.
Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess.
Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female
ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers
if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young
people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to
the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed
from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more
of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive
homosexuality. Much of humanity -- especially females -- can enjoy
homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human
sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction -- until now,
accomplished through marriage. But that of course is "heterosexism," a
bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be
extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as
hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man
putting a ring on a man's finger -- if they show only women fingers,
they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be
now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as
antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people
smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians -- i.e. those who believe in a divine
scripture -- will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in
Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow
a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it -- a
man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be
morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Indeed -- and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex
marriage activists -- the terms "male" and "female," "man" and "woman"
will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the
intellectual and cultural left, "male" and "female" are deemed social
constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage
advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a
father -- the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a
second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can
do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and
even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce -- which presumably will occur at
the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian
mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no
father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley's "Brave New World." All
thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes
unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

Anticipating reactions to this column -- as to all defenses of man-
woman marriage -- that it or its author are "homophobic," i.e.,
bigoted and unworthy of respectful rejoinder, it is important to
reaffirm that nothing written here is implicitly, let alone
explicitly, anti-gay. I take it as axiomatic that a gay man or woman
is created in God's image and as precious as any other human being.
And I readily acknowledge that it is unfair when an adult is not
allowed to marry the love of his or her choice. But social policy
cannot be made solely on the basis of eradicating all of life's
unfairness. Thus, we must love the gay person -- and his and or her
partner as well. But we must never change the definition of marriage.
The price to society and succeeding generations will be too great.

That is why Californians must amend their state's Constitution.