Correspondence

...JONATHAN RAUCH Washington, DC AS SOMEONE WHO IS QUOTED in Stanley Kurtz's "Beyond Gay Marriage" and who has first-hand knowledge about some of the assertions therein, allow me to make a couple of clarifications...

...Technically, the executive order is not a law, but is best thought of as a rule of engagement, formally recognizing existing custom, and meant to signal to other heads of state that we won't try to kill you, so don't try to kill us...

...The position of gay people today is akin to that of women before suffrage...

...STEPHEN CLARK Salt Lake City, UT STANLEY KURTZ FAILS to understand that the meaningfulness of marriage springs from the bond the participants share with one another...

...The difference between killing in war and assassination is not that assassination is for "political reasons," while war is not...

...Shouldn't they benefit from and be protected by the stability of a legally recognized gay marriage...

...That this is not a trivial concern is reflected in the adoption of the executive order banning assassination...

...STEPHEN ANDERSON Richmond, VA KILLING ME SOFTLY JOHN YOO ("Legally Dead," August 4/August 11) may be technically correct that no law prohibits the targeting of specific enemy leaders in war, but he misapprehends the reasons why until recently the United States and most other nations acceded to such a ban, and why current U.S...

...Just as the Supreme Court in Lawrence found that these kinds of "secondary effects" require careful scrutiny of laws criminalizing sodomy, I believe they require careful scrutiny of laws criminalizing plural marriage...

...It is true that the families I have spoken with who are living in plural marriage express the same kinds of anxieties that many lesbians and gay men express in homophobic locales—that if "outed" they will be fired from their jobs, lose their children, or be the victims of similar kinds of discrimination...

...The best and probably only way to defend marriage is to insist on the principles that make it unique and universal: "If you want the benefits of marriage, you have to get married," and "One person, one partner, no exceptions...

...So for purposes of warfare, rightly or wrongly, they have been and are essentially treated as civilians...

...In any case, Kurtz risks seeing marriage end up as just one among many single- and multi-partner arrangements...

...One of her weakest points is that we have no similar public stake in any other family form—in the union of same-sex couples or the singleness of single moms...

...After all, as Clausewitz said, war is just politics by other means...

...Three-way domestic partnerships, should they arise, would surely tug marriage in the same direction...

...Still, while President Bush can simply ignore his own "rules of engagement" (since he is commander in chief), it's hard to see, as Yoo evidently does, that killing Saddam Hussein would not be a violation of that order, or international custom, as we currently recognize it...

...Wouldn't gay marriage also encourage sexual fidelity and mutual caring among gay partners...

...First, the ACLU did not "step in to help [polygamist] Tom Green during his trial," and its policy on the religious practice of plural marriage that Kurtz quotes predated Tom Green's case by many years...

...He can do this by noting that just as technological changes altered the respect accorded enemy leaders in war 400 years ago, so today, enemy leaders with direct access to modern communications technology, who personally direct military forces, who clothe themselves in military garb, and who dispense with the existing laws of war at whim, will not be accorded the customary protections that might normally otherwise pertain...

...What of the children of gay couples...

...President Bush needs to articulate a just and clear policy regarding the use of force against enemy leaders, or risk undermining his own moral and legal authority...

...There was no legal or moral reason not to have assassinated Hitler, but it would have violated custom...

...But thoughtful conservatives should be able to agree with one point: that when it comes to the use of state power to criminalize or even prohibit the voluntary formation of certain kinds of intimate associations between consenting adults, the government should be held to the highest standard of proof...

...JOHN JAKUBCZYK Phoenix, AZ...

...Gays and lesbians—just like marriage—have in some form or other been a part of many cultures for many years...

...JONATHAN F. KEILER Bowie, MD MOMMY DEAREST THOSE OF US IN THE GRASS-ROOTS prolife movement have known about Mark Stricherz's anti-abortion "security moms" ("A Moral Majority," August 4/August 11) for years...

...Gallagher further argues that heterosexual marriage helps to ensure "sexual fidelity [and] mutual caretaking...

...The latter amendment would be much easier to pass than the former and would allay Kurtz's concerns of polyamory, although he neglected to mention the possibility...

...We have continually seen first hand that women are more pro-life than men and that a solid, well-rounded politician who is pro-life will on average always beat a pro-choice politician, presuming that some other issue— taxes, for example—does not become the main issue in the election...

...There are, as Gallagher admits, other legitimate forms of marriage...

...After reading Stricherz's article, the question is whether the overpaid political consultants who are scared stiff of the word "abortion" admit they were wrong and sit down with those in the movement so that we can make some progress...

...Indeed, as a religious practice plural marriage ought to be entitled to the highest degree of constitutional protection and subjected to "strict scrutiny...

...policy, as it stands, is hypocritical...

...What Kurtz fears is that just as the courts have found no reasonable justification for anti-miscegenation laws (which he utterly fails persuasively to distinguish from bans on same-sex marriage) and now sodomy laws, they will find no reasonable basis for prohibiting same-sex unions or plural marriage, let alone a compelling justification...

...Gays and lesbians are becoming parents in greater numbers...

...Then go out and kill them...

...The basis for the distinction is historical, predicated on technical developments in warfare that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages...

...But he sees same-sex marriage as leading down that slippery slope, when it is in fact a barrier...

...State the policy clearly and apply it equitably...

...One can always find statistical evidence to oppose the expansion of group rights, but the expansion of rights is a matter where statistics and possible drawbacks matter very little...

...Prior to the gunpowder revolution, heads of state frequently fought at the front rank of their national armies, and not infrequently died there...

...Polygamy and polyamory advocates may be out there, but it is an illusion to think that banning gay marriage will slow them down...

...Doesn't the public have a stake in decreasing the spread of HIV/AIDS...

...Or are the children of gay parents not on Gallagher's mind when she speaks of "the equal dignity and social worth of all children...

...But marriage is not just about children...

...Homosexuals are asking for nothing more than what all heterosexuals take for granted: the ability to marry one person they love, as opposed to zero people, or two or three or more people...

...Second, the quote attributed to me has no bearing on the alleged relationship between same-sex marriage and state-sanctioned polygamy...

...Unless gay marriage can be shown to be more than a civil rights issue, then there is little legal ground on which to deny homosexuals the ability to marry, short of an amendment to the Constitution...

...Isn't marriage, homosexual or otherwise, stronger and better than its poorest examples...

...and those alternatives will be, if anything, more vulnerable to polyamorists' lobbying than marriage is...

...To the contrary: The ban on same-sex marriage gives impetus to "marriage-lite" alternatives (domestic partner rules and the like...

...And that was categorically a different matter than the killing of mere uniformed military leaders, such as Yamamoto...

...With or without inclusion in marriage law, the gay parenting trend will continue...

...Marriage, as far as the government is concerned, has always been a mere contract between people...

...Gallagher goes on to say that "if marriage is just a way of publicly celebrating private love, then there is no need to encourage couples to stick it out for the sake of the children...

...And, just as women's suffrage strengthened the one-person-one-vote norm by universalizing it, so same-sex marriage strengthens the principle that everyone should be able to wed one's life partner...

...Lincoln, whom Yoo cites as an example of "political assassination," was probably the president who most closely fit the mold of Frederick or Napoleon, and he was the last president to actually come under enemy fire (at Fort Stevens...

...But in purely legal terms, how was Lincoln's intense and active involvement in directing the Civil War different from Saddam's actions...

...As a recent government report states, the incidence of HIV infection among gay and bisexual men is on the rise, increasing 17 percent since 1999...

...There were exceptions, of course: Napoleon and Frederick the Great, to name but two...

...Samesex marriage reaffirms and strengthens both principles...

...This amendment could define marriage as between a male and a female or, more generally, between two individuals...

...But gay marriage hardly means the human species will die out or that everyone will turn gay...

...With the greater and more impersonal dangers cannon and muskets brought, heads of state chose to lead their armies, in general, from relatively safe areas...

...As long as gay marriage remains a civil rights issue, the case against gay marriage is doomed...

...Gallagher's principal point is that marriage between a man and a woman should be protected to further the human species and to raise children in wedded bliss...

...Gay relationships can and should benefit from the same social and legal structures that support and define these childless marriages...

...The distaste for assassinating enemy heads of state has to do with the recognition that in modern times, while leaders may wear two hats, directing both government and armies, they are removed by custom from actual combat...

...BENJAMIN ISAAC Larchmont, NY MARRIED WITH CHILDREN MAGGIE GALLAGHER'S ARGUMENTS in "What Marriage Is For" (August 4/August 11) seem divorced from reality...

...If, as Kurtz insists, plural marriage (or same-sex marriage, for that matter) inevitably results in the kinds of "devastating" social consequences he fears, then the states should have no problem proving that in a court of law, and courts should have no problem concluding that those practices can properly be proscribed...