I'm actually watching The O'Reilly Factor on Fox news. They are discussing gay marriage. O'Reilly is taking the gay people's side of the argument in his interview with Bill Bennett. Bennett just said that the purpose of marriage was to civilize men, protect women and raise children. How can he say that women need protecting when women soldiers are being sent to Iraq? I certainly don't need a man to protect me. That's what the NRA and lax gun laws are for. As for civilizing men? Is he saying that Ted Bundy would have been a law abiding citizen if he'd been married? And Bill Clinton is married and look at his trouble with Monica, Paula, Jennifer. What a relief that Clinton is married, I can't imagine what his life would be like if he wasn't civilized (Read that last sentence with a lot of sarcasm). And I suppose he thinks children can't be raised in single parent households. Well, if one of the parents die, I guess the surviving spouse will have, what, a thirty day grace period and then will have to remarry so the children will be raised correctly? Bennett also said that gays getting married is the reason heterosexual marriage is weak - because it cheapens the commitment. Well, heterosexuals have been getting divorced since oh, the 1960s here in America. I don't think the gay marriage issue was a big thing back then. I got news for him - marriage is weak because of the power of the media and the wealth of the industrialized world. In places where life is simpler, no tv, no luxuries, people stay married longer because they have a real relationship. They have to deal with each other and rely on each other. They are a living example of the word Union. With the luxuries, media, money, the human race has become transient in its behavior - the channel surfing syndrome applied to their whole lives. They have been conditioned (in large part by the media) into thinking that there's a quick fix out there for all that ails them, they only need to keep searching for it.