Via the American Power blog, we found this excellent post from last August on the definition of marriage from Sense of Events:

….

All of which is to say that the accidental characteristics of marriage – love, affection, property and other rights – spring from what marriage is rather than define what marriage is. Therefore, whatever relationship homosexuals may have with one another, and whatever legal rights civil authority may confer upon them, marriage is inherently – indeed, metaphysically – the province only of men and women united in matrimony.

Well worth a read.

Here is a really good paper laying out the basis for the traditional definition of marriage, and making the case for why the definition should not be changed to include same-sex unions. A must read for anyone who cares about the issue.

Abstract:
In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction. We further argue that there are decisive principled as well as prudential reasons for the state to enshrine this understanding of marriage in its positive law, and to resist the call to recognize as marriages the sexual unions of same-sex partners.

Besides making this positive argument for our position and raising several objections to the view that same-sex unions should be recognized, we address what we consider the strongest philosophical objections to our view of the nature of marriage, as well as more pragmatic concerns about the point or consequences of implementing it as a policy.

The Washington Post had an editorial on Friday, criticizing the new move about Joe Wilson And Valerie Plame, “Fair Game”, for repeating many of the untruths about the whole Wilson-Plame episode and the Iraq war.

The close:

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

It’s good to see a mainstream media outlet that tries sometimes to report it straight. Of course, there’s not so much to gain politically now from the “Bush lied” myth, so it’s safer to diverge from it.