07:46 AM EST on Monday, February 16, 2004

The gay-marriage issue has emitted a copious quantity of glibness -- such as the suggestion that couples of two men or of two women are pretty much like couples of a man and a woman when it comes to raising children, or any of the other laborious duties of spousedom. After all, men and women are differentiated merely by minor issues of plumbing. Right?

Well, even conceding the fine work that Anne Fausto-Sterling has done on the endless ambiguities of gender, someone whom most reasonable people would call a "man" and someone else whom most people would call a "woman" are, well, really very distinct, physically and psychologically.

We are now embarked on a grand social adventure. Will declaring that the absence of one of the two (major?) sexes in the parental duo doesn't much matter improve America, particularly for children? Will encouraging the raising of children in such households work out better for society than has, say, the acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbirth since the '60s?

I realize that the range of functionality and dysfunctionality (more my own experience) in families of all sorts is immense. And maybe gay marriages will jump-start a new world of love, tolerance -- and urbanity. But it's a little early for such assumptions.

-- Robert Whitcomb