It’s a good question.

The answer is:  “No, gay marriages are not a threat to traditional marriages.”

No one is keeping traditional couples from tying the knot. I cannot for the life of me see how the marriage of my gay friends is a threat to my marriage… any more than the marriage of the nice young couple who have just moved in next door.

When my gay friends marry they are, in fact, supporting the institution of marriage. They are standing up before the world and saying that their relation is a deep and abiding one; one in which they pledge to one another a lasting commitment that goes beyond the temporary and merely physical and reaches into the spiritual. They don’t want a “civil union” which, no matter what they are told, sounds more like a license to cohabit.

I think some of the objection to gay marriages is simply rooted in linguistic habit.

It sounds odd to say that John and Bill, or Mary and Sue are married. When my brother-in-law became a nurse  it sounded like a  gag to introduce him as “my brother the nurse.” I wanted to say “male nurse” because “nurse” sounded so feminine. I got over it.

I don’t intend to offend anyone, on either side of this debate, but I must say that I think objection to gay marriage is rooted in an excess of imagination; an excess of curiosity about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.

Varieties of sexual expression are extensive enough to nicely cover behavior in both gay and straight bedrooms.

Same stuff going on in both, so curb your imagination. Good grief! I try not to imagine the comic grotesquery of the sexual encounters of my heterosexual friends.

I extend the same courtesy to my gay ones.