GAY MARRIAGE POSES NO THREAT

O N MAY 15, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage in the most strongly worded gay-rights decision to date.

The court invalidated nearly all discrimination based on sexual orientation. The 30-day waiting period is over. Starting tomorrow, California joins Massachusetts in permitting adults to marry the person of their choice, even if that person is the same gender.

Cultural conservatives are quick to point out that most Americans condemn gay marriage. I'm not so sure.

The fact that all of the candidates for president of the United States endorse civil unions for gay couples proves that the cultural mores of the nation may be changing. We're already walking down the separate-but-not-quite-equal road. Eventually this will collapse under the weight of justice and equality. Gays, like interracial couples before them, will get their wedding cake.

Cultural conservatives are also quick to bring up the "slippery slope" argument. If gays can marry, soon the perverts, polygamists and pushers of all kinds of odd unions will be knocking at the door.

None of these groups, however, has a track record of living together, staying together and raising children that can match that of gays and lesbians.

Studies show that children benefit from having two loving parents, regardless of gender. I've taught the children of same-sex parents, and the children appear to be doing just fine.

The third and perhaps most forcible argument against gay marriage is the moral one, often rooted in passages from the Bible, like Paul's letters to the Corinthians. Paul appears to argue that every man should have a wife and every woman should have a husband, even though he would prefer that everyone remain unmarried, like him. Paul is mute on the subject of homosexuality.

The moral argument for or against gay rights is often forged during adolescence and young adulthood.

For instance, as I was running out the door to my first job as a teenager, my mother called me back inside: "Your father and I want you to know that you're going to meet a waiter at that restaurant who's been working there for 20 years. Some people may say bad things about him because he's gay, but there's nothing wrong with him. Besides, he makes the best cappuccino in town."

Years later, in college, I served as a resident adviser of a dormitory. My senior year I was called into the dean's office to talk about one of my residents, who had just attempted suicide. The dean went on to explain how the boy had recently announced his homosexuality to his deeply homophobic parents. They told him not to come home (or expect tuition) unless he agreed to undergo therapy with an alternative-lifestyle intolerant therapist. The young man agreed.

But the therapy didn't work. Later that summer he hanged himself from a rafter in the basement of his childhood home.

Would he have hanged himself if his parents had spoken kindly of even one gay couple?

A few months after graduation, I took a teaching job at a local public school where I was paired with a master teacher. Her lessons were inspirational, magical at times, and daunting (since I had to follow them with pale versions of my own).

Almost two decades later, I still use some of what I learned from her in my own English classes. Funny, I didn't find out until recently that she's been living with the same-sex partner all of her adult life.

Would it have mattered? Would it have mattered either to me or to her students if she were married?

People are clearly not on the same page when it comes to issues of sexual orientation. But we may be nearing a tipping point. I've certainly witnessed an erosion in the rock-hard homophobia and bullying that existed when I first starting teaching, 17 years ago.

The thawing effect is starting to reach the highest offices in the land. New York governor David Paterson certainly wasn't acting "politically" when he directed all state agencies on May 29 to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states and countries.

YOUNG people and more and more adults may not condone homosexuality, but many are starting to accept the notion that sexual orientation is not a choice, that gays and lesbians pose no threat to straight people or to America's institutions, and that they deserve equal protection under the law.

Perhaps it's time for a little love and a little levity.

California and Massachusetts, like two couples at opposite ends of the country, are inviting the rest of us to the party, and I can think of only three groups of people who should care about the expanded guest list: gays and lesbians, their friends and families and divorce lawyers. *

Mark Franek is a writing professor in Philadelphia.