I created a collage of photos from on line. I sent it in, and I posted it on my blog, www.monicahelms.com/blog

I read this first and had a sophisticated and educated comment to make but then I just watched the photos and I cried. I shared the slideshow with friends on my facebook account and I'll paste my notation here:

"If any of you can look through these images and tell me that the Gay marriages in the state of California (or anywhere) should be dissolved then you are soulless and heartless inhuman creatures and I pray that you will never ever speak to me again.

If you feel what I felt, if you got the same lump in your throat and pain in your chest from looking at these beautiful couples and families - I am proud to know you and I would stand by your side at war."

Thank you.

Beautiful Michael.

Huh. I see the effectiveness of this as an advertising campaign, but I'm unmoved by the sentiments it attempts to draw out. I considered not responding at all, given my views on marriage, gay or straight, but I'm tired of the gay marriage movement's constant emphasis on couples and families as the epitome of civilisation and I think it's worthwhile to keep asking what kinds of norms we replicate at the cost of forgetting that marriage is also an economic contract that's increasingly designed to leave many people out.

This campaign, like so much else of the gay marriage movement, conveniently casts marriage as a manifestation of nothing more than love and commitment. The reality is that marriage, increasingly, is being posited as the only way to gain the most elemental benefits, like health care. The sentimentality of the campaign belies its slickness and the slickness hides the harsher realities that are being occluded by this campaign.

And a legal question: is nullifying a marriage the same as "divorcing" people? The slogan "Please don't nullify our marriages" wouldn't, obviously, work as well as "please don't divorce us" but it might be more accurate. Nobody's being forcibly divorced here, right?

That doesn't mean I support Ken Starr (who seems to need something to do), but I have to wonder if we shouldn't be more accurate. And, following on the first commenter's note, it's likely that gay marriages will go the same route as straight marriages.

Can we move past the idea that the fact of a cause (gay marriage) being opposed by the Right automatically makes it an idea worth rallying around, without questioning its basic precepts? What's the difference between this campaign and something coming out of the "save our marriages" campaign touted by the Right? Does anyone else notice that this seems pretty similar to the rhetoric and images propagated by the Yes on 8 campaign?

Ken Starr is still alive? The guy who wasted millions on a guy lying about getting a hummer now wants to go after the Gheys. Brilliant.

Man, somebody give that guy a blowjob, already. It's all he wants, just a little attention, oh, and maybe a lot of legal fees. I forgot about the money.