that the State is involved with legislating to ensure the identity and status of children." Again, absolutely, and withholding recognition from the same-sex couple parents disadvantages their children by exposing them to schoolyard bullying, preventing non-biological parents from making life-and-death medical decisions and generally sending a message to those children that they are worth less than the offspring of married heterosexuals. There's also a lot to disagree with, but I'll limit myself to the central point, that allowing same-sex couples to marry would make marriage about the adults, not the children. Marriage has also been about the adults. We plight our troth to our spouses, not to our unborn children, and while some religious vows include an 'openness to life', or willingness to have children, nothing in civil marriage requires the participants to want or even accept children. This argument is a furphy. Benson has followed the advice he gives at the opening of this article, and his mildness in his opposition to equal marriage is to be commended. However there's a longer companion piece to this article here http://goo.gl/uyzEH , in which Benson et al. outline the religious case against equal marriage. His mildness here notwithstanding, Benson makes it plain in the longer piece that he and his fellows wish to continue marginalising same-sex-attracted Australians by la annie : 21 May 2011 9:21:03am Great article! No matter how the arguments get twisted, the reality is adults and children all fare better emotionally, physically, financially, etc. in biological families with