"Nearly four in five - up from 57 percent just a decade ago - support openly gay military service members; and amid the enactment of anti-gay constitutional amendments in 11 states this past November, exit polls showed that 60 percent of voters favor legal recognition for same-sex couples.

The speed with which our movement is advancing on all fronts is absolutely historic - and it hasn't happened by chance or by accident.

...Wrapping themselves in cloaks of "family" and "values," [small but powerful group of anti-gay extremist] groups are spending tens of millions of dollars to confuse, distort and subvert the public debate that continues to change hearts and minds about our right to equality as it opens America's eyes to the true family values that LGBT couples, parents and families are living and demonstrating every day."

(Source:  "Unity Statement from National Gay Groups," January 13, 2005; endorsed by a coalition of 22 lesbian, "gay," bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) groups; accessed at "PFLAG Joins 22 GLBT Groups in Unity Statement," Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays http://www.pflag.org/index.php?id=307 .  See also "Homosexual Groups Unite to Push Agenda." AFA Journal, March 8, 2005.)

"The issue here is not the relative degree of tolerance accorded homosexuality in past and present cultures. The issue is 'same sex marriage.' Outside of a few recent experiments found in Scandinavia, there are no examples in all human history of equal treatment accorded to hetero- and homosexual marriages.

Claims to the contrary, sometimes found in the gay journals, dissolve under serious scrutiny. Rather, as all the great anthropology surveys show, heterosexual marriage can be found 'in every known human society,' as George Murdoch writes in his book Social Structure. 'Gay marriage' is a novelty peculiar to a few cold places during the last ten years.

...What advocates for same-sex marriage actually want is a new right, one that would allow them to change the very nature of the institution they claim to respect, and by that change further weaken it."

(Source:  Alan Carlson, in Eric Zorn and Allan Carlson, "A Primer on the 'Gay Marriage' Debate," The Family in America, Volume 17  Number 08, August  2003; http://profam.org/pub/fia/fia_1708.htm .)

In the epidemic of divorce that has swept America in recent decades, hundreds of thousands of mothers have divorced their husbands and found replacement partners.  Unfortunately, these mothers' favorable view of their new romantic relationship is frequently not shared by their adolescent children.  The stark discrepancy between the way "re-partnered" mothers view their post-marital relationships and the way their teen offspring view them stands out as the most striking finding in a study recently published in the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage by sociologists from the University of Arizona.

Scrutinizing data collected for 83 adolescent children with divorced mothers who have found new partners (through dating, cohabitation, or re-marriage), the Arizona scholars remark that "divergent perceptions emerged for more than half of mother-adolescent [pairs]."  More particularly, the data show that "mothers seemed more likely than their adolescents to offer positive (or non-problematic) comments."  For instance, one of the mothers included in the study painted a very favorable picture of the relationship between her new partner and her teenage daughter: "The relationship between my partner and my child is very good," she said.  But her teenage daughter gave the Arizona scholars a very different perspective: "Sometimes it's a little weird cuz I'm not all that comfortable [with] the person yet."  Another mother expressed confidence that her daughter had overcome initial reservations about her new partner ("My daughter has become more accustomed to the relationship.  As she matures she has become more accepting of him.").  However, her teenage daughter contradicted rather than confirmed this perspective ("I hardly ever see my mom because of him.  My life would be a lot different without him...We don't get along at all!").

In the "discrepancies" between how re-partnered divorced mothers viewed their relationships and how their teenage children viewed those relationships, the researchers see evidence that perhaps the mothers and the teen children in this study have tried "to hold back information or feelings from each other in an attempt to protect themselves or the mother-adolescent relationship (e.g., the adolescent has not revealed to his/her mother his/her level of discomfort with the new partner so as not to disrupt the mother-adolescent relationship)."  The Arizona scholars also plausibly suggest that "whereas mothers may be hoping that all will go smoothly as they re-partner, adolescents feel disloyal (to their fathers) if they easily accept or see positive aspects in the new partner and his impact on family life."