Three of my children are medical doctors they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew but they don't know much more about soul than he did.

My father and mother were second cousins though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

My father was a Catholic but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

My parents had a wonderful marriage but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirely dependent on my father because that's how it was in those days.

Second marriage is an issue that our Founding Fathers wisely left to the states.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

My parents had an arranged marriage as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it and I will continue to write about it.

My older sister was at the cusp of new wave and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture.

My argument is simple which is that for several thousand years in Western civilization marriage has been the union of one man and one woman. Research is overwhelming that children need mothers and fathers.

Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.