I admit, I really didn't understand where the Scalias and Santorums of the world get the idea that decriminalizing sodomy threatens the sanctity of marriage. It would seem to me that keeping the government out of people's bedrooms helps, rather than hinders, the protection of marriage.

In his editorial The Bedroom Door, William Safire explains. Now I get it. The sodomy laws are viewed by the Christian right as a dike against a flood of gay rights legislation, especially legal sanction of gay marriage.

How allowing gay marriage would affect whether a heterosexual couple gets married and the couple's probability of staying married still eludes me. In the US, the state does not bestow sanctity (i. e. holiness or sacredness); only legal sanction, which is something else again. As a sacred institution, marriage is administered by churches.

Even though Safire gives too much credence to the right-wing Christian position, he makes some good points:

. . . straight marriage is showing signs of strain. More nubile women are postponing weddings to pursue careers. More eligible men dither along into uncommitted cohabitation. More of our marriages are ending in divorce, as no-fault life doth us part. Now marriage isn't even between one man and one woman, the way it's been for thousands of years. Traditionalists despair: What's happening to the idea of the rock-solid, procreative, mutually supportive family?

Rather than wring our hands and cry "abomination!", believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house.

His general point is valid: that people concerned about marriage should focus on the behavior of heterosexual adults. But I do wonder why he didn't bother to check divorce statistics before asserting in the NYT that More of our marriages are ending in divorce, since divorce rates in the US have been trending downward for 20 years. I assume he didn't check because it is the conservative position that additional people getting divorced translates to an increasing incidence of divorce.

Can I get some of that Family Values energy behind a movement to put sidewalks in the suburbs, please? The promotion of sidewalks in the existing suburbs plus a prohibition on building new developments without sidewalks would do much to strengthen family neighborhoods. You don't get the connection? Maybe I should enlist Safire to explain.

MEANWHILE, Writing in Orange cites this weblog and Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Electrolite as exemplary weblogs.