Americans experience sexual difference as a reality, not an appearance, that exists amid the diversity of social customs. They acknowledge this reality in the way they raise children, organize social life, and structure public spaces. Americans from widely varying religious traditions, both Western and non-Western, affirm this in their communities of worship. Coming together as citizens, they have chosen to embody this reality in the special legal status they give to a man and woman who are willing to become a total sexual community—lifelong, exclusive, and faithful.

David Coolidge in “The Dilemma of Same Sex Marriage,” in Crisis, July, August 1996, p. 19, quoted in CBMW News, March, 1997, p. 16