Legalizing gay marriage, then, is not a radical reformulation of an unchanging institution. It is the long-overdue correction of a moral anomaly that dehumanizes and excludes a significant portion of the human race. But it is hard to see how. No existing heterosexual marriage will be changed. We do not hold that belief.
Homosexuals are already part of families across America, and they always have been.
They deserve to be there under better conditions than strained condescension and fickle toleration. If anything, the equal inclusion of homosexuals in marriage will strengthen family life as it folds gay family members into the social warp and woof of their parents and siblings. Some argue that such a change should never be imposed by the courts, since homosexuality remains a source of widespread public unease. But surely such an argument also applied to the courts' assaults on anti-miscegenation laws in the 1950s and '60s. After all, public hostility toward interracial marriage was at least as great in 1967, when it was finally protected by Loving v. Virginia , as is hostility toward same-sex marriage today.